His Power is Made PERFECT in Weakness

It's been one of those weeks. You know the kind I am referring to? The ridiculous "everything-that-could-go-wrong-has-please-Lord-don't-make-me-get-out-of-bed-until-next-week kind of weeks. In the throws of it all, I have silently stewed over missed turns, complained loudly about the patient that rings the bell just a little too much, and overall simply buried compassion while I was too busy feeling sorry for myself for having to get out of bed at all.

It comes down to this: I am extremely frustrated by my weaknesses.
I am not one to take failure in stride;it shakes me every time I respond in a way I'm not proud of, or the times that I am unable to succeed at a task that I want to do well.

I am finding myself so ravaged by insecurity these days that I "extrapolate my hatred of my own weakness onto the world around me", and every interaction I have is impacted by my fear of failing. And fail I do, over and over again, countless times before the day ends!

In less than a month, I will be in Haiti. As the trip draws closer and closer, more and more this lie has built up and put itself on a little throne, declaring the words
"YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH"

And I have believed them.

The symptoms of my weakness are showing through in my relationships, in the kind of nurse I am when I step onto my unit, and in the state of exhaustion that I have been living in. With this trip literally weeks away, I have been terrified. "Could there really be a more inconvenient time to be coming face to face with your insufficiency? How can you go away like this?" I think.

But then I remember... My weakness points me to the foot of the cross... my brokenness to my desperate need for a Savior. And in that, there is freedom, because I know that He gives grace. He is redemptive, and He redeems my ugly moments.

And all of the fears I have about not being good enough diminish when I hold them up to my Perfect Savior, a Savior who loves me wholly, who does not expect perfection from me but desires my heart, my obedience, and my trust. I withhold them all so easily when I let fear govern my life. I cannot sustain my heart, my lungs, my frame on my own strength. I have no joy, hope, or freedom apart from the Lord.

I am comforted when I think of my first interaction with Sandra Wilkins at Haiti Health Ministries via email. I asked what their requirements for volunteer nurses were, and her response to me was "Only willingness, Jessica." She didn't say I needed x amount of years of nursing experience, or that I had to be an RN instead of an LPN. She didn't ask how much creole I knew or how much time I spent reading my bible a day. She just asked that I be willing, and I think that is profoundly what the Lord asks of me...not to have all the answers, just to be willing and open to getting to know Him. Not to be whole, but  rather to allow myself to be transparently broken, whatever soils I happen to be on.

It is harder for people to see Jesus in me when I hide my weaknesses. I think when my weaknesses are most exposed, people are most exposed to seeing the Jesus I love colliding with me; when His sufficient grace seeps into the caverns of my soul and restores me in impossible ways. So I have hope! For even when I fumble as a nurse, fail as a friend, disappoint as a daughter... His power and grace manifest. He is so beautifully unrestricted by my failures and unafraid of my weaknesses.

Could there be any better time to come face to face with that?!