Exposing My Weakness
(Longer-than-normal post warning)
A week ago I was in the mountains outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico at a Student Life camp with hundreds of teens and their adult leaders. The topography required over 11,000 steps per day with an average of 8 floors of climbing at 7000′.
Two weeks ago I was in the orthopedist’s office looking at the image of a knee with zero cartilage and lots of bone spurs…my knee.
Now add to that, my propensity to feel inadequate, rejected and superfluous, and you have the perfect formula for exposing weakness!
By Wednesday, my journal entry looked like this:
Okay, God. You and me. Here. Now!
What is wrong with me? I am not a happy camper!
I feel superfluous, excluded, dismissed, overwhelmed.
I am exhausted, ignorant, lost, confused. Once again I have been told I don’t fit, or it has been implied. Rejection has come from a completely unexpected source.
(Then followed several lines of grumping, criticism of the sound, the music, the food…)
I hate feeling like this. I want to be grateful, hopeful, peaceful – like I am designed for. Instead I’m whiny, grumpy and contentious. Help!
I thought I was supposed to be here, and just because I am miserable doesn’t mean I’m not. I just hate this. And why do I take it out on a student that is particularly dear to me?! Why do I judge instead of ask? Am I to be of no use here, too? Am I too old to serve in this way?
I’m tired of feeling far away from You. Help me find You again!
One of the small-group discussions had dug around in the story of 80-year-old Moses’ encounter with God at the burning-but-not-burning-up bush. Instructed to return to Egypt, where he was wanted for murder, His awareness of his own inadequacies (impeded speech, hot temper) overwhelmed His grasp of the power of the Almighty, and he looked for a fall-back plan just in case he met with resistance or rejection.
I bring nothing to this. I am Moses, unable to speak truly of who You are. Fearful, bitter, angry, brash, but tongue-tied and desperate. Who am I? Who do I think I am? If You can use me, use me. Otherwise shove me aside, muzzle and correct me, but make me alive in You or put me out of everyone else’s misery, and my own.
God’s answer was for Moses to surrender the one thing that he kept for protection: his staff.
“Throw down your staff,” says the Voice in the flames.
Moses is already barefoot in the desert. (Can you say “vulnerable?”) Now He wants him to put down his only weapon? To surrender the thing that keeps the sheep in line…
Moses throws down the staff and displays amazing agility for a man of his years as he leaps out of the way of the hissing serpent that now writhes on the ground before him! (And you thought he was in a weak position before…) Now, against all good sense and common-practice snake-handling, Yahweh says, “Pick it up by the tail!”
If you had any doubts about Moses sanity, here they are settled, because he does! (What was he thinking?)
What is the snake You have challenged me to pick up that I have run from?
My discomfort and disorientation, my fear/belief of rejection. I will not try to muffle or disable them. I will take them by the dangerous end so that Your power is make known.
What does that look like?
Openly acknowledge my feelings, my fears. Become vulnerable — real.
I am terrified…both of doing it and not doing it. I need to be aware of my actual feelings and of why, or it will just be more grousing…Provide what I need!
The slithering thing becomes a staff in his hand. The thing that could have bitten him becomes a strong tool…the kind of tool I need.
Following Jesus… in my weakness… every day in the everyday,
Christi
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