and Now You're Weak (but that's okay)

  

Hello, dear reader!

It's nigh six months since 2024 began. Halfway through the year. Six months of more beauty and growth and seasons to come...

When 2024 began, I considered picking a theme word for this year but couldn't. Instead, I found that as I lived through the pages of a calendar, God found themes on His own to adorn my months (perhaps He knows what I need most to grow), ;) and these last 6 months, it's been grace ... and  w e a k n e s s.

utter inability. ineptness.

Funnily, I learned "inept" in ASL before I knew it in English. ;) The professor showed us the sign and defined it as the opposite of skilled.

... and being inept this year has been so good.

Because we ended 2023 by saying goodbye until Resurrection to a dear friend who died. Then there were days of family in the hospital. Ups and downs and heart-tearing, and as I sat before my laptop with the start of a novel tumbling in my mind with so many plot holes I couldn't even fill, I felt completely inept.

I like to picture my writing desk as a warzone. It's a place where beauty is created, like snippets of Eden in the brokenness of this fallen world. It's where the enemy is fought and defeated by ruthless prayer.

But my desk is more like a messy meeting place with Jesus. I try to arrange my candle and mug full of pens, the letters from friends which mean so much, and the honey jar for tea, but it always remains disorderly with stray pencils and papers by my elbows.

In this place, I pour out my heart to Jesus and beg for inspiration. I write out of weakness and ask for His strength. I create chapters that may need to be completely rewritten later and poems that may never be read.

I'm inept without Jesus.

And I love that. Because it makes me pursue Him, seek Him, and in my season of weakness, His strength is beautiful and tender and... well, strong. =)

In my weakness, I learn the beauty of God being a God who hears.

I cry out to the LORD with my voice;

With my voice to the LORD I make my supplication.

I pour out my complaint before Him;

I declare before Him my trouble.

When my spirit was overwhelmed within me,

Then You knew my path... 

Psalm 142:1-3

I found myself poised with fingers on the keyboard and no ideas to go forward as I just begged for help; in His amazing Storyteller way, Jesus came through and whispered character arcs and names and adventurous cliffhangers and purposes. As I drafted, it's like He read over my shoulder, offered ideas, and it's okay that there's loads of editing to be done later, because this is a first draft that I get to write with the One I love more than life itself who literally is the God who hears.

His promises to Israel are especially beautiful,

And they did not thirst

When He led them through the deserts;

He caused the waters to flow from the rock for them;

He also split the rock, and the waters gushed out.

Isaiah 48:21

If God had His people then, He is still trustworthy, beautifully faithful.

Yes, in loss and fear and inability, I'm broken and weak.

And I'm so glad, because it produces dependency on Jesus! I look back now on the time of drafting the novel as 2024 began, and I see victories overruling the struggles to produce beautiful words because He was (+ continues to be) strong.

Yes, this year is one marked by weakness... and strangely, strength. It's His strength, His grace, ascribed to me because of the redemption of the cross and Jesus in me! 

And it's okay. It's not shameful to weep tears to our Father. It's okay to sing brokenly, to pray desperately, and to not understand but trust anyway.

I wonder if that's as beautiful as when we dance in ecstasy, because in both ways,

we l o v e + t r u s t  Him.

Our Jesus is coming to make all things new, and the ending of the story will be magnificent! Like when this novel I began is finally published, the result will be beautiful.

But today is the middle. In it, He is the God who hears.

It's the waiting faithfully until He returns. It's the drafting of a novel that didn't have an end, and the characters hurt and struggled and h o p e d.

I love this,

Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer,

The Holy One of Israel:

"I am the LORD your God,

Who teaches you to profit,

Who leads you by the way you should go.

Oh, that you had heeded My commandments!

Then your peace would have been like a river,

And your righteousness like the waves of the sea."

Isaiah 48:17-18

There is victory in Jesus—His finished work on the cross, His Spirit today in us, and His coming return to bring restoration to all that's good and recompense to all that's evil!

Victory.

If today feels weak or strong. Broken or whole. Sensical or confusing. Inept or skilled.

My identity and strength and hope is in the One Who makes all things new. And I can pour out my heart before Him, for He is a refuge for us (Psalm 62:8).

Hold on, you broken warrior, and keep fighting, even if it's messy and looks like desperate prayers.

His strength is sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9).

(( + spoiler alert, Jesus will rule as King in the end! )) ♥

As for our Redeemer, the LORD of hosts is His name,
The Holy One of Israel.

Isaiah 47:4

~♥~