“I can’t believe how awful I was. I keep imagining his sweet little face looking at me like that. How could I have yelled at him with such anger?” I put my head in my hands, sobbing. Overwhelmed by emotion, I imagined my oldest son, my firstborn baby, looking wide-eyed at me, wondering who this monster was that his mother had been transformed.
My oldest and I had endured a series of tough days. Our emotions raged like uncontained wildfires, and I treated my son like he was old enough to comprehend his own feelings. Everything he did (to me, to his brother, to our house) I took personally.
Used to being the center of attention, my oldest tried every way to get my attention…including breaking all of our house “rules,” scratching and biting his brother, and running away from me when I told him all of these things were deserving of a time out. Feeling overwhelmed, I did the one thing I vowed I would never do, I let my anger win. I lashed out at my oldest, yelling at him while trying to make him fearful of disobeying me.
Shame and guilt clouded my heart, and I immediately wanted to try again. Start over. Erase these awful days where my own measure of motherhood ceased to exist. Create a new day where I was a “better” mother, strong enough to see clearly through my anger.
I ultimately wanted to do it in my own strength and be the perfect mother.
I am constantly reminded through each imperfect circumstance that I am not capable of raising these boys alone. God knows I don’t hold the capacity as a mother (or human for that matter) to be perfect. Daily, motherhood stops me in my own tracks and causes me to close my eyes and ask for His help, His wisdom, His guidance.
Because Lord knows, I have no idea what I’m doing. Even as I think about life in a pandemic world, making the right decisions for our family causes panic and overwhelm.
But with God, I don’t have to feel hopeless.
Would you showcase the weakest fiber of your heart? Extend your hand in greeting a stranger while exposing your inabilities? Rejoice in the way you can’t for all the money in the world stop worrying, feeling anxious, or getting angry?
Paul did.
Maybe not these weaknesses exactly, but he boasted in his inabilities. Why? Because he knew God was protecting him from exalting his own self. From thinking too highly of what he thought he had done., accomplished, figured out.
Because where Paul’s weakness brought him down, God’s power rose like a Phoenix amidst the ashes, directing his gaze toward God and His glory. My weakness meets God’s strength in a divine union that creates endless possibilities. But it is only in my weakness where this strength is found.
Being overwhelmed can begin so small we don’t even realize it’s taking over until it consumes our every thought and infects our heart. Feelings of hopelessness can impact our ability to discern God’s truth from the lies that haunt our inner thoughts.
Sometimes we can get ourselves into some pretty overwhelming situations.
Outcomes seem dire. There doesn’t seem to be a pin drop of light at the end of the well-known tunnel. Our yellow brick road has morphed into a maze with obstacles and dead-ends at every turn. And God’s truth seems like a distant “feel good” dream that doesn’t apply to the situation we’re in right at this moment.
And I say get ourselves into these situations because it’s in these moments, each moment, we continue to make choices that deflect God’s truth. Insignificant decisions that harden our hearts and move us from a place of union worship to complete apathy. God wasn’t part of the fates we determined for ourselves. We forget how faithful he was yesterday when we are climbing the mountain of overwhelm today.
We put the emphasis on our own hearts. Because that is how satan works; he says we have to untangle the ball of yarn. We have to dig ourselves and climb out of the hole we’ve created. We have to do it on our own. And shame on us for putting ourselves here.
Maybe you have been feeling overwhelmed in your own life.
A pandemic. A year wrought with turmoil and dread. Political and racial angst. We have, no doubt, had to fight to find the light, the silver lining. This has been a year (or two) for the history books.
There are fine cracks in my own resolve that, when left unmonitored, become beaten to the point of shattering. And I find I’m left holding all of my overwhelmed emotions of motherhood, this virus, what others think of how I’m coping (or not coping) in my own hands instead of placing them in God’s hands.
Or maybe we do place them in God’s hands again and again, but we miserably continue to move closer to the pinnacle of our proverbial (but very perspicuous) pit. We wonder how we snap out of it. How do we break the chains that entangle our every good intention for change? How can we find our way from our overwhelmed state of being back to the Garden of Eden in our own hearts where fellowship with God makes our cups overflow?
One word: grace.
Paul describes this thorn in his side. A weakness he can’t seem to shake.
And yet, in an almost sick and twisted way, he seems glad about it. Or that’s my interpretation of his words.
My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in (my own) weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest in me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in my weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10 NIV
To delight in weakness, hardship, persecution is a strength that we are only capable of doing for Christ’s sake. A superpower that is difficult to bear on our own. Who actually does that? To be delighted in the things the world says make you a failure? Boasting about the attributes the world tells us to hide seems counterintuitive.
But we don’t find God in our own strength.
We can’t manifest his presence as we fight our own battles. He wants our weakness first. In order for God to do what he does best, we need to recognize our weaknesses and put them at the front and center of our conversations with God. He is the only one who can bend our minds. God actually invites our overwhelmed feelings into His being, and there we find peace.
So, how do we uncover God’s truth in times of trial? We rip the bandaids off our bruises and uncover our weaknesses. We look at the holes in our hearts that we keep trying to fill with our own concoctions. The bandaids were a temporary fix for something good our powerful God has created. The concoctions never entirely placate the way God’s truth intends.
Grace is a cup of your favorite drink that never empties. A shared laugh with a friend that fills your whole body. A heartfelt embrace that reaches past the anxiety and breaks through to your core, shattering self-doubt and misinterpretation.
Grace is God. And He is sufficient.
Your Turn
What is my weakness? How can I pinpoint the beginning of my overwhelmed state so that Grace can cover all of the ways I put my head in the sand? Ask God to uncover that which is keeping you from the best version of yourself. Where we are weak, then He is strong.
