2 Corinthians 12:8-10
Recently God has been revealing to me a deeper knowledge of myself, particularly my weaknesses & limitations. This has made me feel really vulnerable at times. I’m very much an advocate for embracing who you are, as this has been very liberating for me. But sometimes it’s hard to determine whether certain traits are part of who I am, or whether they are holding me back or crippling me from being who I really am. & also, whether certain weaknesses are things God will change, or whether they are my ‘thorn in the flesh’ that I just have to learn to live with. I soon realised that I won’t find these answers by trying to figure it out by myself, but only by waiting on God & giving the revelations time to unfold.
I believe that personality traits aren’t intrinsically good or bad, but each trait can be both a strength & weakness. The example I usually give is my emotional nature. I am very emotional, & can really struggle to manage my emotions at times. This can be very bad for my emotional health, & this can then have detrimental effects on all the other areas of my life. But I’ve found ways of dealing with my emotions, not by suppressing them but by re-channeling them in positive ways. I embrace my emotional nature & can see the positive aspects of it- it allows me to be able to relate to & empathize with others better. It also means that I am very passionate & can experience life more fully.
I’ve mentioned before that fear still holds me back in many ways, & I’m seeking to overcome this. But now I’ve realised that fear is not the only thing holding me back, & there’s a deeper underlying issue too. You see, I’m very much an introvert, & I’ve always had problems with socialising. This has meant that I spent much of my life feeling very lonely, & was desperate to be truly known. I did not know how to show the ‘real me’ to others, as I struggled to express or articulate what was on my mind or my heart. Thankfully God has helped me improve in my ability to socialise & communicate verbally, & I’ve also found other ways to express who I am- through writing, the way I dress, music, crafts, climbing, crazy dancing, etc. But still, the most effective way to connect & communicate with people is often through conversation. So my difficulties with communication are a cause of much frustration, as they hold me back from developing relationships more fully. This limitation of mine fuels the fears I have, which hold me back even more.
So is my inability to express myself freely a part of who I am, or a crippling of who I am? Perhaps a bit of both??
Recently I listened to a brilliant TED talk called ‘Embrace the shake’. I highly recommend that you listen to it; it really blew my mind! The speaker is an artist who discovered that embracing a limitation can drive creativity. What he was saying seems very counter-intuitive & goes against most of what I’ve heard or presumed about creativity. His thinking was pretty much the ultimate in thinking outside the box- he suggested to get in the box in order to think outside it! What he found was that having too much choice paralyzed him, making him unable to gain inspiration. But when he had a limitation, it forced him to think creatively to find a way round it. But he had a choice- either let the limitation hold him back, or use it to gain creative inspiration.
This guy said that we need to first be limited in order to become limitless. Wow! & then it gets even better- what he thought would be the ultimate limitation turned out to be the ultimate liberation! This reminds me so much of the verses I started this blog entry with. Paul said that ‘when I am weak, then I am strong’, which is a similar paradox to what the artist discovered. So we should embrace & even ‘delight’ in our limitations & weaknesses, ’cause when we do, we find that God works them for our good. When we acknowledge how weak & limited we are, & rely on His strength, we find such power & ability to achieve great things, & such liberation. Limitations don’t have to hold us back; God has given us the capacity to turn them into springboards!
So I’ve been slowly learning to love & accept myself the way I am, & to stop beating myself up about my weaknesses. It’s still a work in progress, but I’ve become a lot better at it :). I’ve experienced how destructive & crippling feelings of guilt & worthlessness are, so it breaks my heart when I think about others who still struggle with these feelings. So I want to give my life to showing people just how precious they are & how much they are so loved by God. I want people to stop being held back by their insecurities & the belief that they’re not good enough, but that they’ll see the huge potential in themselves & what they are capable of, & that this will empower them to pursue big dreams & overcome great challenges. I’ve found that if our sense of worth is based on achievement, the pain of failure can be so crippling that we barely have the strength to keep trying. But I believe that if you can grasp that your worth is based on who you are, not what you do, then this frees you to achieve all that you are capable of. & I’ve found that we start to find true fulfillment when we quit trying to prove ourselves to others, but we simply be ourselves, embracing all who we are.
‘Embrace the shake’ talk: http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=YrZTho_o_is.
In Pursuit of Love 