God's Got This - A Reflection on Strength

"For when I am weak, then I am made strong."

- 1 Cor. 12:10

"A vocation is a gift. If it has truly been given to you, you will find the strength."

- Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede

     Most Sundays, you can find me, either by myself or with my gaggle of little ones, with a thick, black book open in my lap. When I'm alone, I read in silence. When I'm with the little ones, they read aloud with me. We are praying the Liturgy of the Hours together. This morning, you would have found me, alone in my pew, with a thick book in my lap. However, it was not my Divine Office book. Yes, I'll admit it, I was reading a novel: In This House of Brede. You see, I simply can't put it down and it's not the first time. 

     I read the book for the first time in High School and loved it so much, I read it again. Now, for the third time, I'm reading it once more. I always love re-reading books, especially when I know I've underlined so many words. And so, as I was reading this morning in Mass, I came across a very boldly underlined sentence (see above). As I turned the page, the cantor announced the opening hymn and I had to close my book. 

     I was quietly reflecting on the sentence I needed so obviously when I first read it during the Mass Readings. Suddenly, I realized the first letter from Corinthians was saying, "For the sake of Christ..." and then the above quotation. So, during Communion, I began to reflect on what strength really is. I went back to a few letters I had written yesterday and then even further back to the night I just spent crying (complete vulnerability) in sister's arms and once more back to when one of my dearest sisters said to me, "No matter where you go, you must promise to follow where God leads you. No matter where you go, I will never love you less." Those were all memories of strength in my greatest moments of weakness. That's when I came to this conclusion:

     In all my moments when I felt the strongest, I had only minutes before suffered from intense weakness. I realized that in giving in to the weakness, I was being made strong. See the truth is, we don't like the feeling of weakness, so we try and try and try to remain strong. But the longer we try to be strong when we are really weak, we actually get weaker. It is when we finally let go of our pride and let ourselves become weak, that God fills us with the strong. You see, in my tears and heartache, I was so weak, and when I finally let go of my pride of holding back tears and trying to be strong, when I let the tears flow with someone I trust, I was filled with such strength. 

    So, when you find yourself feeling so weak. Let go of it all, and let yourself simply be weak. Like when as a little girl, and you were so tired, that the moment your Daddy picked you up, you fell weakly asleep in his arms. Let yourself fall weakly into Jesus' arms, for that is why His arms are open on the cross, so you can go to His loving arms. You will find that when you surrender to your weakness, God will fill you with such strength. And I can trust that if my vocation is truly a gift for me, I will find the strength over and over again, just as I have already!