Devotion 378 - Srength

I bought a card at my favorite card store.  It had a beautiful bird in flight and shooting stars flying after a glittering moon.  It felt perfect.  I love cards;  I love cards that are blank inside.  When time allows, part of my Sunday afternoon pleasure is writing cards to loved ones.

It started years ago when my husband and I were courting.  We lived in two different states.  We never really dated.  We had become friends as students on foreign soil.  When we met again, our lives busy with work; distance made dating out of the question.  So we wrote often daily.

My father devoted his entire life to working for the phone company. He patrolled his long distance bill like a sergeant at arms.  I was allowed a call here and there but short and sweet was the mantra.  Our longest conversations occurred by letter.

I am convinced the love that has seen us through twenty-eight years was fashioned by God and forged by pen.  There is honesty, creativity and a passion that goes into writing.  Thoughts find our lips too quickly.  They travel longer to the hand and pen.  They go through valleys and learn to climb.

I sat down to write my oldest son.  He had faced a bit of an accident and now finals were bearing down.  I wanted to encourage him.  I wrote the only two words that came to mind, “Be Strong.”
  

I wrote them big and they looked quite stunning on the page.  This was my wish for him.  I had my 3 dollars folded up for his coffee and was ready to seal the envelope but those two big words seemingly stared back at me. 

Of all the things that he had facing him papers, tests, constant headaches from a recent injury, it seemed unfair if not unkind to tell him to do or be one more thing.

I opened the card and realized it was not him I was writing to, it was me. When I sat down to write, I had just finished lunch with my littlest daughter.  We had dined in a restaurant and she surprisingly asked for a booster chair.  It has probably been three years since she even looked at a booster chair.  I grabbed the booster.  We were squeezed into one side of a narrow booth.  Suddenly with the booster we cozied up next to each other and we sat looking and giggling at each other. We were both amazed we could see one another in the eye.

She told me she was big.  I told her she was beautiful.  Then she said, “Remember in China, how you carried me every day in a back pack?”

Indeed it was true.  It was a front back built for a toddler, but every morning immediately after she was dressed she silently demanded she be put in her papoose.  She had no words then but made her wishes abundantly clear.

Some four years later, we both sipped our soup staring eye to eye.  She said, “I wish you could carry me again.” Strange, one minute so gleeful she was tall and grown up and the next wishing to be carried.

How is it that part of growing up is the belief we must grow away from dependence?  We become too big to be carried, we become too old to be fed, we become too proud to need.

I opened up that card and the end of the sentence from a period to a comma adding two more words, “Be strong, through Him.”

When we reach the end of ourselves, when we finally realize we are not strong ENOUGH, or brave ENOUGH, or wise ENOUGH or beautiful ENOUGH. He rushes in with a wind of fire and reminds us we never had to be.

In our weakness, if we allow Him, His strength can take flight.

My daughter is too tall and too heavy to be carried, but just for a moment, I wish I could lift her and carry her and feel her hot breath in the crevice of my neck

Dear one, that is exactly the offer the Father extends.

When we are too tired of trying, too weary of lifting, too exhausted from the course we have set before our life, He says, “let me carry you.”

You see we are not limited by the physical; we are limited by the never ending fill of pride.

Pride says, “I can.”  Surrender says, “through Jesus we are able.”

In our weakness we find strength, not ours but His. It is an extraordinary exchange. We give up and give in only to find a supernatural power that fills us to a contented brim.

Our up reached arms that felt like defeat now embrace victory. It is not a battle to the brink of exhaustion and frustration but a battle for a life worth living.

Yes Beloved, be strong; He is on our side. 

 "Cast your burden upon the LORD and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken." Psalm 55:22