I have a hard time getting to know people. It doesn’t matter if they are the nicest people in the world, I break into a cold sweat just thinking about starting conversations with people I don’t know well. After the initial three or four (…or eight or ten…) meetings, I will likely be comfortable enough to only freak out in the car ride to visit with them, as opposed to the whole day or week prior. Until then, however, I am a hot mess when it comes to building new relationships. In conversations, I am awkward, uncomfortable, and distant. Even if I don’t seem that way on the outside, inside I am literally sweating and frantically trying to remember every ‘get-to-know-you’ question I learned through youth group. Like I said…a hot mess…
Needless to say, I am an introvert. I would rather sit at home reading than go out to spend time with new people. When I do go out, I am so exhausted by the end of the night that I normally fall asleep in the car on the way home.
Unfortunately, when you have a husband in ministry, you are not allowed to be an introvert. You definitely can’t be socially awkward or go to great lengths to avoid situations that may call you to meet people. You need to rapidly make friends, spend every ounce of free time with other women, and be excited that this is the life God has called you to.
While I adore my ministry husband and truly feel blessed to lead this life, this idea of the outgoing, spontaneous, and courageous minister’s wife terrifies me. That is just not me! God and I have had many conversations about why He would choose to put someone like me in a role like this. Why I would be entrusted with so much responsibility and so little capability?
While I was reading in 2 Corinthians last night, something hit me like a ton of bricks. He did it so that I could be used for His glory.
Paul writes that it would be foolish to boast in the things he had accomplished. Instead, he chooses to boast in his weaknesses. He brags about how God can use him in spite of his inadequacies. That doesn’t mean Paul never asked that they would be taken away, he just recognized that God doesn’t always work the way we want Him to and that we are still expected to serve Him no matter what.
This left me thinking – what if God gave me this fear…this inability….so that whenever I do manage to walk across the room or go out to coffee or a ballgame, I know it is not my ability, but God working through me. It is a humbling realization, to know that I can’t do it myself…but it is also such a freeing feeling to know that I don’t have to.
Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 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 about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.