You don't despise our weakness.
I got rear-ended this week.
For a lot of people, it’s not a big deal – it was actually a super minor accident, no one was hurt, it wasn’t my fault and the other driver had insurance.It was a big deal to me. A bigger deal, perhaps, than I let myself believe for almost a full day after it happened.It’s a long story that I won’t bore you with, but I was in a bad accident when I was 16. The feeling of my car shuddering in response to an impact triggers something in me. For the next few days, distant sirens sent me into a panic and a loud crash from an overheard movie made me crawl up in bed to protect myself with pillows.
And yet maybe more than the anxiety and fear, I felt embarrassed.
Everyone kept asking if I was hurt, and since I knew what they meant I could say “no.” Friends who later saw my car’s minor damage would smile and say, “Oh, that’s not too bad.” The other driver was apologetic and stressed but none too fazed.I could feel myself crumpling under the weight of my own expectations. I am stronger than this, I don’t have time to get so upset, I’m an expert at powering through emotions I don’t want to feel.And then only hours after it all happened, someone in one of my classes prayed something that has stuck with me:
“Lord, you don’t despise our weakness.”
It offended me at first. Why wouldn’t he despise my weakness? I sure do. I constantly despise my weakness: shaking hands, unwarranted tears, my heart racing when the stoplight turns green. It disrupts my day and my own perception of strength.This week was a painful reminder of my own frailty. My strong armor of accomplishments can be crushed with a single shove, my tough exterior shattered as my car is barely bumped by another one.
I’ve always assumed he despised my weakness. Because I certainly do.
I read 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 the morning after the accident, “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. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”I’m sure I’ve read it a thousand times, and not once have I delighted in my weaknesses.I read it again later that day, sitting in a parked car with two kids in the back seat, waiting for numbers three and four to come out of the elementary school. I nanny one day a week, but in only a few months I’ve grown to love these children dearly. Don’t ask about how I spend my Thursdays or you might get stuck looking at endless pictures on my phone, as I gush over them like a new parent.I sat in the front seat, reading these words on my little Bible app on my phone, wondering how I could ever truly say that I delighted in my weaknesses, wondering how I could ever truly believe that God does not despise them.I looked up from the app for just a moment and caught a glimpse in the backseat of a precious three-year-old fast asleep in his car seat. I had the perfect view of him from my rear-view mirror. His head had fallen over his little seat belt, a perfect row of eyelashes resting on chubby cheeks. He was so small, so helpless, so weak.I didn’t despise his weakness. When I buckled him up into that car seat, I wasn’t annoyed that he couldn’t withstand a car crash without it. When I later carried him from the car to his bed, a giant pink blanket getting caught between my legs, I wasn’t frustrated that he needed rest.
In fact, I’m more annoyed by his strength.
When he resists getting in to that car seat with a tangle of surprisingly strong arms and legs, I sometimes wish he was just a little bit weaker. When he refuses to eat his lunch or take a nap or have his diaper changed, I wish his will was weaker, because I know what’s good for him better than he does. I wish he didn’t have the strength to push back so firmly on my instructions.So I’m keeping these two things in my back pocket: “He doesn’t despise our weakness,” and a mental picture of that view from my rear-view mirror of a sweet three-year-old snuggled into a car seat. Both remind me that God doesn’t despise my weakness. In fact, my weakness is not even a nuisance to the God who wants me to give up on flailing my arms and settle into my car seat.