Your Weakness' are a Gift!

My weakness and my poverty is a gift from God, and yours are too. 

I have been in a season of my relationship with Jesus where He is leaving no stone unturned. Everything feels vulnerable, exposed and raw, but in the best ways. 

In this deeply vulnerable state, I have had to confront the weakest and poorest parts of myself head on.

Most of the time, when I look at my weaknesses and my poverty, I feel two major things. The first is shame. I am ashamed of all the ways I fall short. Like how unassertive I am, or my people pleasing nature. I am ashamed of how much I overthink my actions, or how resentful I can get when things don’t go the way I planned them.

The other major emotion I feel is a sense of justice. Basically, I host a pity party for myself. I tell myself a narrative in which my weak nature is justified because of all the areas of my heart that are wounded and have been hurt. Because it's easier to blame my current external situation for my emotions than to look inside myself.

If I am honest with myself and with you, I am unwilling to look at my own interior poverty because I am repulsed by it. I am repulsed by my weakness and incapacity, and so I use it as an excuse. In doing that I have hurt other people. I have even been hurt by others who have used their fears or wounds or poverty against me; to justify their actions.

And it’s partly true, if our whole life and actions depended on us… you and I certainly would be too weak and broken to do anything.

So, what is my poverty? 

It is self reliance. At its essence, it is not turning to God to be the source of all my strength.

And man oh man, does Jesus ever know this about me. He knows how self reliant I am - in my work, in my family life and in my relationships with others. He also knows how self reliant I can become on the good gifts he has given me like resilience, generosity and work ethic.

He knows that I am chained by my poverty. And He hates to see His daughter in chains.

So He permits situations for my poverty to show itself. For the ugly head of my self reliance and pride to be reared and brought to the surface. He exposes the darkest, deepest ugliest parts so that they are no longer hidden. So I have no choice but to address them. 

Oh how resistant I am to this kind of love initially. Because in my weakness, I cannot see this as love! I see it as failure, or as another “test” to endure. Another season of desolation and dryness. Sometimes, it has even felt like abandonment.

But oh how wrong I have been. My Father would never abandon me.

Because when I am stripped of all my vices and pruned of all the things I grasp at and try to control… I am finally free to turn to Him. My Saviour. My Beloved.

He waits there, patiently, with open arms and full of compassion. And in freedom, I can finally come to terms with the truth.

That I can do nothing on my own strength. Nothing with my own wits or capacity. When I do, I hurt others, I hurt myself, and I hurt my relationship with Jesus. Each and every time.

Fr Jacques Philippe wisely says that:

“The experience of poverty is meant to help us realize what we truly have in our hearts, to know ourselves as we are, without illusion. It is meant also to awaken a new hunger in our hearts, hunger for God. In poverty at the heart of the struggle, we realize that no food, no satisfaction, and no human security can suffice.”

This brought me to one of the greatest realizations I have experienced in my relationship with Jesus.

That if Jesus had not given me my weakness and my poverty, I would never know how much I need Him.

I would never know much He deeply, passionately, and sacrificially wants to be everything for me. That actually, my weakness and poverty is something lovable to the Father. 

In this love story with Jesus, self reliance is not an option. In His perfect love, He has made it so that He alone can, in the beautiful words of the age old Surrender Novena, “take care of everything”.

All He asks of me in return is to give Him my trust, and my faith. To give Him permission and surrender my whole life into His capable and loving hands.

And so, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me!” (2 Cor 12:9). 

Only Jesus could transform my heart so much so that today, in freedom, I can thank Him and praise Him for making me weak and poor. So that I can fall to my knees in gratitude for all that He permitted in my life to bring my weakness to the light for Himself to heal.

So that I can pray in joy "Jesus, do more. Root out more. Prune more. Expose more. So that all I am is consumed by only You".

Jesus, I surrender my weakness' to you, take care of everything.

Jesus, I surrender my poverty to you, take care of everything.

Jesus, I surrender my self reliance to you, take care of everything.

Jesus, I surrender my life to you, take care of everything.