SECRET STRENGTH
My daughter lay sobbing on the couch. “I can’t do anything right,” she said. I sat gently beside her and swept the stray hairs from her forehead and face, and tucked them behind her ear.
“I don’t think that’s true,” I said after a moment. “I think you do a lot of things right, sweetheart.”
“You don’t understand, Mom. I can’t finish anything I start. When I’m in school or if someone is talking to me about something for too long, I just gap out and I can’t focus anymore.”
“That’s okay, hunny, that happens to everyone from time to time,” I said, still rubbing the top of her head.
“No, you don’t understand,” she continued, more tears streaming down her cheeks and soaking her throat. “It’s not just sometimes, it’s all the time. I can’t finish anything. I can’t commit to anything. I fail at everything!”
These are not my favourite conversations. If you have a child, you will relate to the pain of being a parent and having a child who is believing negative things about themselves. You want to undo it! You want to reach into their mind and heart with a healing balm and you want to escort the demons out. But it’s not easy to do.
We tell them a thousand times how beautiful they are, and how talented they are. But still they believe these lies. It’s like they want to believe them!
I ran my finger down the soft skin of her arm, remembering how soft it was when she was a little baby. It’s still just as soft. “Father,” I prayed silently, “Show me how to heal your girl.”
Because as much as she is my girl, she is so much more so His. As much as her pain squeezes my heart tightly and makes me frantic sometimes, His heart also aches. He cries over His daughters and His sons. But He is not frantic. Because He can see the end of the road.
“Sweetheart, can I tell you something?” I ask.
“Okay,” she answers, starting to settle.
“The scriptures tell us that God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. Does that make sense to you?”
“Ya.”
“Every time you come to this place of desperation—every time you fall on the floor and clutch your chest, crying out that you can’t do it, that you are unable to finish something on your own, or unable to finish anything on your own, ask Him to strengthen you. The most beautiful thing you can give to Him is your weakness, love. Because that is when you will feel his fire inside you. That is when you will feel His power rising up inside of you and you will know that you are not alone.”
After a few quiet moments, she wiped her face and smiled. A rare and precious moment when the truth settles.
It is a miraculous thing, a magical thing, to realize that some of the most hurtful lies the enemy tells us are actually true. They are deception because they do not tell us the whole story, only the part that brings us to our knees in despair. But when we come to the Maker, the lover of our souls, He will tell us the rest. How powerful it is to actually face that enemy and agree with him. To say, “You are right, I am not enough. I am inadequate. I have failed. But I know Someone who has died in my stead, has carried the shame for me, and whose power inside me is so great that it is beyond measure!”
Have you ever felt this way? Tell me about it by commenting below. I’d love to hear your story 
<3 Janna