Have you ever been in a place where you feel like you should be a hot mess, but are strangely together? How about times when you feel like you should cry, but the tears don’t come? Or maybe that you feel like you should be falling apart, but you somehow keep standing? How about the need to be strong no matter what, so you put up walls of emotions so you don’t feel, because you are afraid that if you feel, you will break? I know the feeling and I know I am not the only one that feels this way. My family needs me to be strong. My friends need me to be strong. I need me to be strong. So you stand on your own strength to make it through the days until you can catch a break. The break never seems to come. Are you living like this? That’s how to be strong right? Beautiful one, that is not the truth about strength.
The God who equipped me with strength, He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the heights.
Psalm 18: 32-33 (paraphrased)
I have known that the truth about strength is that we are the strongest, when lean into Him for strength. The truth is that it is when we are the weakest that He feels the strongest. The truth is that when He embraces us with His love, that is when we can stand on top of the walls that we have built up and stand in victory over our weakness. But regardless of the truth that I know, I often forget and recently I have been feeling a bit like I described above.
I had a couple women over recently for dinner. They are the same women I get together with every month to share a meal together, laugh together, pray together, encourage each other, share together, and sometimes shed a tear together. I was sharing a bit about how I was feeling, and one of the women who prayed for me mentioned letters I had received. Letters I received? She said the letters that I have received hold the truth. What she didn’t know was that a few years ago a woman from church put together a book of letters for me. These letters included words of truth and encouragement from about 20 people in our church family. They came at a time that I was struggling to know what I was in Christ, with the idea of becoming a mom, and also what God was asking of me. I pulled out the letters this week and I read the words that 3 years later still ring as true today as they did back then. As I read the words, I began to feel His love crashing over the facade of strength that I was trying to build up. Like a swim in the ocean on a hot day, His loving was refreshing and His love was strong! I want to share a few pieces of these letters with you, because I believe these truths are as much for you as they are for me.
You are a light in the dark world.
Know that God is looking down on you and smiling.
Remember how loved, beautiful, whole, blameless, special, and treasured you are.
There is so much He has in store for you if you fully rely on Him.
He is proud to call you daughter and loves when you sit at His feet.
I hope that you can look in the mirror and know you are lovely, and loved.
You are made with purpose and God will show you the way to go.
Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.
Matthew 7: 24-27
When I am standing in the edge of the ocean with my feet in the sand, and when the waves crash in and then flow back into the sea, my feet start to sink in the sand. But when I am in the ocean and I am standing a on rock, I am immovable by the the waves that crash and flow around me. When His love embraces our weakness, we move from sinking in sand to standing on His solid rock. Let His love crash over you. Let His strength allow you to stand firm and rise in who He created you to be. It starts with a simple prayer… God, I am weak, and you are strong. Be the Solid Rock on which I stand.
