It occurred to me lately that of all the labels I’ve stopped allowing to define me,  “weak” has managed to stick a little harder than the others.

Oh sure, I’d cast off the obvious labels that I myself, and a few others, had given me in the past. Back before the diagnosis. Back before His transforming grace and freedom. Labels like lazy, faulty, misunderstood, unloved, and unreliable.

Those were gone. Cast off. “I will not be defined by this!” was the mantra.

But whether it applied to my faith, or my mood disorder, or my physical health, for some reason I’ve accepted this one label instead of rejected it. Maybe even tried to make my peace with it. Given it leeway. Some wiggle room.

I called it honesty. Being authentic. Ha.

God has always seen weakness as something else though. He sees it as an opening.

I stood outside today, drinking in a bit of sunshine on my back porch, hearing birds singing as spring-like weather hit,  and taking deep breaths. I was waiting. Waiting to be excused from doing all the adulting that was waiting for me. Waiting for God to excuse me from life because I was feeling all the weakness I sometimes feel come over me when my dysthymia doesn’t want me to be present and engaged.

Waiting for it to define my day.

Instead a verse I was studying last week popped into my head, a gift from the the Holy Spirit no doubt, a nudge that pretty much declared to me a theme He’s been teaching me lately, about how nothing is wasted in His hands…

“But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

“Hey Daughter, this is not a label. This is just where you end and I begin.”

When I am weak, He is strong.

Where I cannot be able, He becomes more than able.

Where I have to leave off, He picks up.

Where I come to the end of myself, He has been anticipating being the solution.

Where my situation wants to pull me down, the Psalms say He will raise me up.

“This is where you end, and I begin.”

So, the label changes.

The sunshine warms across my face, the birds flit, the snow melts.

My show of weakness is His opening for real Glory.

So.

Am I really weak?

Or am I just “being completed”?

Being completed.

By the Glorious Creator King.

Now that’s a label I’ll let stick.

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