Power in Weakness

I didn't take the comment personal - I promise.  And I don't think they meant any harm.  It was a little surprising, though.        Mostly, it made me sad.  For them.      I was with a group of people the other day, and one of them made this remark: "I am so thankful to have my health.  If you don't have your health, you don't have anything!"        I cringed when they said it.  Not because I was upset, like I mentioned, but because I was the only person in the room with an obvious and serious physical ailment, and I self-consciously feared all eyes would turn towards me.  Thankfully, they didn't.  The conversation resumed, other ideas were brought up, but my thoughts were still contemplating that statement.        It sounded like a clever maxim, the kind that is passed on from grandmother to parent, from parent to child, and...

I recently finished a book!  The following blog entry is a peak into what it is all about.  I hope to have it published in the next month or so.   Not too long ago I sat next to a grieving friend who was weeping over another loss in her life.   The emotional tragedies seemed to be coming in successive waves, each one more disheartening than the last, with little recovery time in between them.   I sat there silent, not knowing what consolation I could give.   After a moment she looked up at me and a few others that were surrounding her.   She wiped away the tears from her mascara riddled face, and from a broken heart moaned, “I just want to be happy!”        The memory is particularly vivid because I related to her in that moment.   Perhaps we can all relate to a statement as simple and fundamental as such.   I had been wrestling with a chronic illness for several years at this point, and I, too, knew w...

There are memorable exceptions, but for the most part, I don't like to write when I'm not doing well.  I'm helplessly honest when I write, usually more so than in teaching or even in conversation, and I fear that my transparency will reveal the negativity inside.  There's nothing wrong with pouring your ugliness out before God, or before a best friend, but to the whole world via blog or Facebook?  I think there's more than enough of that going around.  And it probably isn't helping the general public to hear that you're broke, your car won't start, or you are mad at someone.  This is probably what the psalmist Asaph had in mind.  At first he complained, "All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.  For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning" (Psalm 73:13-14).  Then he realizes that this private struggle is not exactly ripe for an open forum of discussion: "If I had said, 'I will s...