His Strength is Perfect

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I gather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
2 Corinthians 12:9

I read a handful of blogs on a regular basis. When I get on my computer in the morning, I have a routine that I follow as I go through them one by one. A few days ago, I clicked on one of my regularly read blogs, The NieNie Dialogs http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/
Steph is a young woman of remarkable courage. Last August she, her husband and a flight instructor were in a horrible plane crash. Stephanie was burned very badly. She has had quite a year, as just living has been a true miracle. She doesn't look the same - and never will. She was a really pretty young girl. She was cleaning out some of her old emails that day and had run across a picture taken of her shortly before the crash. She called the photo "A Ghost in the House". Quoting her "I broke down. My face no longer looks like her, and her is me. But I don't look like her. (yes, I am so feeling sorry for myself) I thought about the song Alison Krauss sings called 'Ghost in this house'."

"I feel like that Ghost. I miss my old self so much it hurts everyday and just when I think I have accepted the "new me" I remember her, and it hurts."

I did feel bad for her - for about 10 seconds; then the uglies took over. I started thinking, okay well, it's hard. But guess what - you're alive and are going to stay that way. You get to raise your four little children - I don't. How unbelievably arrogant of me. So, here I sit a week later - a ghost in my own house. And deeply apologetic to Steph to whom I sending a copy of this post.

I look nothing like I did a week ago. I do not look like the same person at all. And I do not have the same function at all either. If you haven't seen me in a while you will not recognize me. I do want others to know this so it isn't such a shock if you run into me in public which happened today. In my husband's wonderful day o f taking care of me, as we were errand running we ran into someone we had not seen in quite a while. They were extremely uncomfortable and abviously taken aback by my appearance. That tells me that I should have mentioned this before.

I do have my walker now. It is wonderful. Although I was hesitant to take this step I am so glad that I did. It has truly given me my mobility back. I wonder why I thought it was such a big deal. Maybe because it is a big deal - but in the best possible way.

I frankly have been struggling quite a bit over the last week. The loss of independence and function is not something that any of us saw coming. I have adaptive equipment all over the house now. At first frankly demeaning to my prideful self, I now realize what a blessings these items are. I hit a really low point and decided that a pity party was definitely in order. So I threw myself a doozy of a pity party.

In His faithfulness, God sent me exactly what I needed. I had a few songs from You Tube saved in my favorites on my computer. I "randomly" opened the folder and clicked on one of them about a third of the way down. It was Steven Curtis Chapman's 'His Strength is Perfect'. I have embedded it below. Please follow it to the end.



I fell again. At this point I'm just too weak to do anything about it. Limp as a rag doll, my body is just folding up. My physical weakness is becoming more and more evident. Probably my lowest day, His strength is indeed perfect. But when my strength is gone, His is evident. My weakness only reaffirms His strength. Fully experiencing His strength gives me so much more than on my own even in my own physical weakness.