Strength in Weakness

“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails” (Proverbs 19:21).

Since my chronic illness took residence in our home, interruptions have become a way of life. Gradually, at first, the disability and the interruptions it created became the dominant consideration in everything we do.

Every day is a challenge; sometimes it’s a new challenge. Richard tells me I can do it. I did it yesterday, I can do it today, and don’t worry about tomorrow.

But I can feel the difference. 

I know the effort it takes to stand, turn, and sit on another seat, and I know each time I am barely making it. I can look back at how my disability has progressed, and with each deficit, I depend on my husband to do more of what I once did for myself and more of what I once did for him.

That dependence means calling him to come help me and calling him away from what he’s doing. It’s normal for a husband and wife to depend on each other for things. When I was more abled, I couldn’t reach the cabinet over the refrigerator, but he could. Now, I can’t reach the pen, the book, or the computer mouse I drop on the floor. My left hand, the one that still works, is getting weaker. I can feel it, and dropping things is becoming more frequent. That means I need him close by, and when he must leave, it can only be for a short time. 

So, if he’s running errands around town—a trip to Staples, then to Lowe’s, and stop at the produce stand on the way back—I occasionally must call him to drop what’s left to do and come straight home. The bedroom rug is bunched up under my wheelchair and I can’t move. 

If he’s doing yard work, or working on a project in his woodshop, he stops when I call him to come in and prepare dinner—sweaty and dirty or sawdust sticking to his clothes. He knows that will be the end of work on the project for the day. 

It wasn’t always this way. I want it to be as it was before when I could pick up whatever I dropped, when I could start dinner and the two of us would work together. But that can’t be. 

What can be is acceptance. 

Meditation: 

“Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. 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 of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong”

2 Corinthians 12:8-10 (ESV).

Question: 

In what way or ways does this passage surpass passive resignation to accept the unacceptable? Read: Philippians 4:11-13.