The Secret to Strength
About a year ago, a friend gave me a simple prophetic word that hit hard. She told me I have a backbone of steel. She didn’t know it, but over the years, I’d received that word repeatedly. In fact, I’d received it so frequently that for a time I resented it. I didn’t want to be the one who could take anything without breaking—because I didn’t want to walk through hard stuff. I had actually gotten so frustrated that I’d complained to God about that word, and from then on, no one had given it to me again. It had been at least fifteen years—until that afternoon last spring chatting and enjoying roasted milkshakes at an ice cream shop with a new friend.
When she said those words, they hit differently. And I felt gratitude.
In those fifteen years, I’d faced several deeply hard events in my life. I’d faced grief and loss on a level I could not have imagined previously. And I found I could stay on my feet in the fight for my child’s life and mental health—not because I was OK (because I wasn’t), but because God breathed his strength into me every single day.
I’ll never forget the day I knew I had reached the end of my own strength, the day I discovered what God’s strength can do. We were already in the fight, had been for months, but that day I received a call that hurt so bad I literally couldn’t stay standing. I crumpled onto the nearby bed. And after I hung up, a wail of grief roared out of me—like I’d never experienced before.
I had reached the end of what I could endure, and in that space, I discovered the difference between my own strength and God’s strength in me.
I hadn’t realized it, but my old strength had been rooted in my own ability. I’m naturally an emotionally strong person, so when I heard that prophetic word in my twenties, I interpreted it according to my own understanding of strength. Even though I believed in relying on God’s strength and the promise that when I am weak, he is strong (see 2 Cor. 12:9-10), I had not learned how to practice that reliance.
My own strength got in the way.
Then, when I faced things no amount of human strength can endure, I learned that having a backbone of steel isn’t about my strength, but about leaning into the unyielding strength of God. That strength is not something I have to muster up on my own. It’s a strength I can literally fall into, trusting he will catch me. All I need is the courage to let go.
Recently, a friend told me a story about her mom, who is a NICU nurse. Because of a complex series of events, she found herself holding a dying premature baby girl who had been abandoned by her mother. This nurse (herself a mother who had lost one of her own children) decided that although she couldn’t save the baby, she could love her into the arms of Jesus. So she picked her up, wrapped her in a blanket, and held her and prayed over her as she died.
That story has stuck with me ever since. A few days ago, while back at that same ice cream shop where my friend told me I have a backbone of steel, I told my oldest daughter the story of that nurse. I could hardly get the words out, through my tears, thinking about the courage it took to show up with such open-hearted love in such a heart-wrenching space.
And that’s when the real meaning of the backbone of steel word crystalized in my heart. It was never about how naturally strong I am, but about the tenacity of a heart infused with God’s strength. The difference between my strength and God’s strength is all about the capacity to love. Our human strength tries to protect our hearts from pain, but God’s strength enables us—like that brave nurse—to wholeheartedly face pain and step into God’s love in the middle of it.
In God’s strength, I can be fully present, open-hearted, and hopeful while sitting in great pain. It’s not a denial of the pain, but a courage to face the pain—knowing that Jesus can handle it, knowing he will make a way through.
Life holds many hard moments—some of them excruciating. In our own strength, we do what we can to survive, to be OK, to find healing. That human strength is a gift from God. It is good and important, but it is not fullness of strength.
Jesus came to give us that fullness. He offers us his strength, a mighty and supernatural strength that rushes in where our strength fails. And if we press into his strength, he will actually change our default response to pain.
We do not always have to run away or self-protect; Jesus can teach us to run bravely forward through pain just as he ran bravely toward the cross for the sake of love.
And in those moments, we discover the truth of Jesus’ promise to Paul the apostle—and to all of us—“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).
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