I’ve been reading a few things lately that have reminded me again of things I’ve said here. The other day, there was an Instagram post by @lauren_stadler. I’m putting her handle name out there to throw this woman under the bus. I’m just trying to not be a hypocrite by doing the very thing that here lately just bugs me. It’s when people are responding to what other people have supposedly said, but they preface it with “Our culture these days….” or “Feminists will tell you….”

Like, tell me where you saw this so I can go and read for myself and see if I agree with your conclusions. So she started out by saying, “I think sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in thinking we should do more…” Being someone who writes about homesteading and food production, shortly after she goes on, “It’s ok to not make it all from scratch. It’s ok to bake your bread but not mill the flour. It’s ok to read the label and buy a pasta sauce with ingredients you like. It’s okay if half the plate is homemade and half is store bought.”

I read this and immediately thought, “Oh my gosh…”, and I wondered if that was what I sounded like when I was talking about meal planning the other day. Like, the things that cause us angst, the things that apparently have to reassure ourselves of and give permission for…it’s wild. We all have different priorities, ways of doing things, and things we’re trying to accomplish. So like I said, I’m not dissing this woman. But to complete my own thought, somewhere I was thinking, “Oh my gosh, get me off of this hamster wheel.” Like, of course it’s okay that she’s not milling her own flour.

And then today I started another book called Balance, Busyness, and Not Doing It All by Brenda Yoder. Sometimes as a person you just need those books that are speaking so very directly to your particular season of life. It’s felt effortless and perfect to read. It started out by talking about finding your identity in Christ. I feel like this is one of those basic things that should be sunken in and melded to every fiber of my being by now. Our worth is not found in what we do, or even what we don’t do, but it’s found in our relationship to God the Father, through the access provided to us by his Son.

She shared a story about breaking down one day in tears and being so upset with herself. I recently had something similar happen, and it was a full blown ambush with cuss words and burying my face in my hands and saying in shame and exasperation, “Why?!? Why am I like this?!? I’ve had these library books for almost a year. They were important books that were part of the school’s collection of Stone-Campbell Movement history. They were in a bag in my room for months, now they are nowhere to be found. And I had to call the librarian and let her know I would not have the bag for her after all.

She talks about embracing who you are, including your weaknesses. She then something that made me question, specifically, that our weakness are not our fault. It makes me uncomfortable to hear that because my mind jumps to say, “Wait a second, you’re just trying to get me to abdicate responsibility for my failures.” If my weaknesses are actually my fault, then I can do something to change them. If I can do something to change them, then I can eliminate my weaknesses so as not have them anymore.

The truth is, that in some way, God uses our weakness for his glory. I’ve heard it all a thousand times. She references a book The Prayer of Hannah by Pastor Ken Gividend, who renames our weaknesses the “lesser-strengths”. The term resonates. Not because I’m necessarily trying to escape the direct reality of having weakness, but because I’m inclined to think of strengths more as something God can use. And gives. And allows. And if that’s true with the greater ones, how much more with the lesser ones.