Unexpected Strength

*I found Holly's blog through the Christian Women Online blogging community, and this blog just spoke to me. This is for all of us who are grieving our community's most recent loss.*

I’ve seen strength in subtle ways -

A Daddy’s arm draped ’round his girl - transparent skin stretched over sinew and muscle and veins - latent power wrapped in protective fashion around pink-clothed vulnerability.

I’ve observed the hands of the young Mennonite girl who waits on me at the checkout counter. Fair of face and slight of frame, the hands don’t match the girl. They are weathered and toughened by hard work, even at a tender age. Strong hands - hands that are capable and willing. They hoe the earth, knead the bread, hang the laundry - yet soothe the wailing baby sister.

I find strength in the grip of an elderly woman on Sunday morning. Where I expect withered flesh I find a firm handshake. A glance in her twinkling blue eyes confirms my perception of her inner drive.


I’ve seen strength in powerful ways -

She’s held in her wheelchair by velcro straps; sipping iced coffee through a straw as we meet. I’m to be her night shift helper. A quadriplegic by way of a car accident - she can move nothing below her neck by her own volition. But she’s got spunk - and a boyfriend, and a job as a radio DJ; and she loves Jesus. She holds on to Him with a ferocious strength.

An older woman sits in the intensive care waiting room, week after week, sleeping at night on the hard couch with a plastic pillow. Scarcely eating, she waits with strength to see if her husband will survive. He’s not even a good man, he’s an angry man. But she prays for his healing and for a few more years. She doesn’t even know how to be unfaithful, to wish for anything different. She won’t leave his side.


The preemie with transparent skin lies flat on her back, eyes covered by a miniscule mask and electrodes mostly covering her body. Her chest rises and falls, and minute by minute she grows and develops. Born too early, her fight for life displays raw power. Tenacity clothed in tubes. “She’s a fighter.”

At 29, she was the freshly widowed mother of 14 month old twin daughters and a 4 year old girl. I drove her home from the hospital. All she held in her hands was the plastic bag containing his clothes, wallet, and Bible. She nursed her babies, listened to his voice on the answering machine, then planned her beloved’s funeral. I saw God give her strength as she grieved, as her little girl grieved, and as they moved through the hard stages of mourning. His strength, her strength, were inseparably intermingled as a decade passed, and as hope was restored.


Usually, unexpectedly, His strength is made clear in our weakness. May we recognize today and every day, where all of our strength comes from.

II Corinthians 12:9, 10 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”