you know the old saying, "God doesn't give you more than you can handle?" well, a friend of mine who struggled for 15 years with "on again/off again" cancer once told me, "i wish God thought i was a weakling."
wishing that God thought you were a weakling so that He would give you fewer burdens sounds, on the face of it, appealing. very appealing.
if God thought i were a weakling, maybe the only thing He woulda given me is difficult hair.
maybe He would've given me chubby fingers and called it a day.
it's sort of fun to imagine that He would have said to all the angels, "you know what.........this nancy rankin that I'm gettin' ready to whip up? she's gonna have to grow up in snoresville, u.s.a., aka, springfield, ohio. so let's go easy on her on all the rest of the stuff."
if God thought i were a weakling, maybe my daughter and son-in-law wouldn't have had a literal last minute change of plans when their twins were born and maybe the literal last minute change of plans when their twins were born wouldn't have been because we all thought my daughter's dad was gonna die the very same day.
and maybe my daughter's father wouldn't have died - period - or maybe at least he wouldn't have died 4 days after the twins were born and abby spoke at his funeral in between running back and forth to the NICU.
and maybe eli's father wouldn't have died completely out of the blue.
and maybe eli wouldn't have lost his job the day they were supposed to close on their house.
and maybe charlie wouldn't be so sensitive and anxiety-prone that it sometimes breaks your heart.
and maybe eli wouldn't be running around like a madman today, trying to tend to his wife who's in the hospital pregnant with triplets who, if they're born now, they won't survive, and his twins who are at home getting into everything and maybe the only thing he'd have to worry about is mowing the grass.
and maybe i wouldn't have to sit here and worry about any of it.
that is, if God thought i were a weakling
maybe, if God thought i were a weakling, maybe He wouldn't have made me so selfish that i think of all these problems in terms of not only problems but in terms of my problems rather than challenging me to think of them as opportunities to serve those whose problems they really are.
not to mention challenging me to trust Him instead of trying to trust my own stupid self.
what if God thought you were a weakling?
