Development Through Weakening

This week, my old boss retired. He’d probably prefer for me to choose my words more carefully, so let me correct myself – my former boss retired. He’s the decision-maker who brought me into the company fold as a permanent employee, off of contractor status. I was green when he took a chance on me. In three years, he taught me how to navigate the corporate accounting systems and much of accounting, in general. His role in my life ended the 10-year saga of me finding myself. It took 10 years and eight job attempts to achieve what every young adult needs after college – stability. I owe this man a great debt.

In his departing email to those remaining employed in his stead, he shared, “I leave you with one thought – invest. Invest in your personal well-being, invest in your career, invest in your family, and invest in others.”

If you know Dean, you know him as humble, pleasant, steadfast, and kind. He is the type of person referred to as, “salt of the earth”. He chose the word “invest”, but I know Dean personally, and Dean is committed, probably one of the most committed people I have ever known. Perhaps he chose the word invest, because investing is a mindful decision, whereas, commitment is something you usually have naturally or you don’t. He reminded us we are all empowered to make commitments by choice – hence the word, “invest”.

Reflecting on Dean’s influence takes me back to being 32 years old again, deep in grief over my best friend’s husband’s tragic death, floundering to plant my feet as a newly licensed CPA. The new career I spent four years going to night school to establish and three brutal busy seasons in public accounting had been stalled by nine weeks of unemployment, which was spent watching my five-year-old dog heal from a leg amputation. My bank account was empty.

A shadow of that girl is still a part of me. Dean’s message of commitment meets that broken, struggling, depleted, not yet established young person. How would she have received his parting message? She would have thought them sound advice, but in her personal case they would have been empty, because she had absolutely nothing to invest in – no family, no career, no well-being, and certainly nothing left over to give away.

I would like to speak to that girl. Keep at it. The day is approaching when your season of struggle will end. It will pay off in stability, in wisdom, and in gratitude. You will find your needs meet, your sacrifices recompensed. You will find rest. And comfort. And peace.

Dear Reader, I know your struggle. Oh, how I know it: to do everything right and be 32 years old just as empty-handed as the day you received your college diploma. I too spent the next four years living with my parents. I too juggled a full-time job and night classes. I too commuted over an hour to work for years. I get it.

The best encouragement the world has given you is the advice that you are the caterpillar who must strain against the cocoon so that your butterfly wings can grow strong enough to carry you into flight at the proper time. A lovely analogy, yes, but to be in the cocoon 10 years takes away its loveliness. Of course your struggle is essential to development. Time is imperative. Growing pains are necessary. None of these conclusions are under dispute. Still, I would like to offer you a little more: Where development suggests a struggle with an upward trajectory, spiritual development works the opposite way. It is development accomplished through weakening. Literal weakening. Where upward mobility is denied, the roots of a living thing drive deeper and deeper. This may be of zero comfort to you now, but I promise, this is just another season. It may be a terribly long, drawn out, sad season, but it is a season, which will benefit you, if you will just persevere.

God is good. And He will relieve you. He truly is working on your behalf. And you will be more blessed than you imagined. It may look very different than your imaginations or wishes, but it will be rich and rewarding.

Development though weakening is permanent. When you find yourself at the bottom, you must confront your honest thoughts, true feelings, opinions about God, and any subconscious sense of entitlement. You learn what dying to yourself actually means. You must. There’s nothing left on which to sustain yourself. At the end of yourself is where God takes up the reconstruction effort. You will be very glad that He exerted His will over your own. He will prove Himself to you. He will make it all worth it.

As Dean said, “Invest in your personal well-being, invest in your career, invest in your family, and invest in others.”

Even when those targets seem shapeless, persevere anyway. Commit to the process and to the God of the process. Be encouraged that development through weakening, and not around it, is how God executes His perfect will.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10: “… I [Paul] was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 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 [your] 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.”

 

Copyright © 2019 by D.M. Harrington