I am trying to be a good little blogger girl and keep up
with my blog and my New Year's Resolution that I have failed miserably at for
the first 31/2 months of the year. And I guess I am still
failing...I had this one written a week ago, but am just now finishing it and
posting it.
This week, I have found myself thinking about all the
different ways that strength shows itself and how your true strength almost
always really shows to others, when you feel like you are at your weakest.
I recently attended a storm spotter class and learned about
how to identify different parts of
storms, how to estimate the intensity of
the storm, and how to determine just which direction that storm is traveling.
I also discovered that I have a new found love for storms and think it would be
pretty awesome to be a storm chaser (Note: the class did not encourage storm
CHASING, it encouraged storm SPOTTING). Anyway, I won’t give you ALL the
details because if you really wanted to know, you probably would have gone to
the class yourself. Plus, I don’t think I could explain it in a way that makes
sense without drawing you a picture, and since my drawing ability is limited,
that probably wouldn’t help either. Anyway, here it is, in a nutshell:
Assuming that the storm is coming directly at you, (besides
being in a VERY bad location), you would
first experience wind—it could be the damaging type, or just strong
winds, depending on how strong the storm is. The next thing you would
experience is rain and/or hail. The stronger the storm, the bigger the hail.
Most of us would think that the strong winds and the rain and hail would be the
“fury” of the storm. It’s the most visible, the most tangible. It almost always
comes with the flashes of lightning and the booms of thunder. It seems so
powerful. But we’re not done yet! After the strong winds and the rain? The
calm. Again, I won’t bore you with what is REALLY happening at this point, but
I will say this—if all the conditions are right, and the storm is strong
enough, this “calm” is most often where tornadoes are born.
How ironic. Storms really show their strength at the point
when you would think they would be the weakest. Not unlike people.
It is very rare that military wives are recognized or
commended as being strong when their husbands are stateside, and working what
is (more or less) a 9-5 job. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with
that—they don’t do it because they want to be perceived as strong, or because
they want to be commended for it. They do it because they love someone who has
a desire to defend the freedoms of those he loves.
It isn’t until their husbands are deployed for an indefinite
amount of time, that these women start to hear the “You’re SO STRONG” comments.
But they don’t FEEL strong. They feel like the weakest person in the world.
Especially during those first couple weeks after deployment. They feel weak.
They feel lost. They feel like there is no way they will survive the coming
months. There’s a good chance that most of them feel the weakest they have ever
felt. The weakest I have ever felt was the period of time that I found out Steve
was deploying to Afghanistan,
and leading up to the 2-4 weeks after he left. I had to make some big decisions
during that time period and never once did I feel strong. I don’t think that I
felt strong again until I was dropping everything and boarding a plane to North
Carolina—and that could have just been the fact that I was carrying 21/2
bags of clothes and a carry-on
full of books. J
I find it so strange that those moments of weakness are when
their strength really shows. Those moments of feeling weak, and lost, that they
somehow harness the weakness that they’re feeling and turn it into, what
appears to others, as strength beyond what most people could imagine.
My cousin recently had an adorable baby boy. At less than 1
month into life, he had to have heart surgery. On the morning of the day that
his heart surgery was supposed to take place, I found myself crying as I was
driving to work. I don’t know if I was feeling over-emotional that day, or if
my motherly instincts that you supposedly get when you reach child-bearing age
finally kicked in, or what. (And no, that is not some “hidden” illusion to any
big secrets). All I could think about is if I were in my cousins place, how I
would feel. What I would do. How completely weak and helpless I would feel,
knowing that my 3 week old baby was going to have major surgery, and all I
could do was sit and wait and hope.
I wasn’t waiting in the hospital at all with my cousin while
she waited out her baby’s surgery and recovery, but I could feel her strength emanating
from her Caring Bridge posts, that I followed religiously. I could tell that
she was handling it incredibly, and that strength, that even she probably didn’t
know she had, was showing itself. Right then. Did she feel strong? I doubt it
(although more power to her if she did!). I would guess that this was probably
one of her weakest moments. And yet, once again, strength beyond what most
people could imagine was showing itself.
Not to mention her 3 week old little boy—at arguably his
weakest stage of life—who recovered from his heart surgery 3-6 days ahead of
schedule, and is still doing wonderfully! Praise the Lord for that!
So, after a few days of feeling “weak”, I must remember that
those moments of weakness are just ways of finding strength. Those moments that
you feel weak, aren’t actually weakness at all. They are moments of strength
that are disguised as weakness. They are the moments that you will look back on
and remember as a time that you had the strength to make it through something
that you thought was impossible.
