VULNERABILITY = STRENGTH

Have you ever been in such a place of vulnerability? A place where you depended on someone for everything? If you find yourself answering, “No”, I too, had never been there either. This place was foreign to me. If you are anything like me then you know that this was a hard place to be. I was 25, a cancer patient and I needed help bathing, using the bathroom, getting up and down from the bed and even walking. I never imagined being in this place and knew I didn’t want to stay long. When the nurses pushed me every day to use my muscles, to get out of bed to walk at least three times a day, I did even when it hurt because I desperately wanted my freedom and independence back. I must admit this was the hardest place for me to be because I’m a very prideful person and I can’t recall the last time I asked someone for help, but I realized everything happened for a reason. Sometimes God needs to get our attention, to slow us down for awhile to help us see what is or was important. Simply put: I learned my vulnerability was my strength. This vulnerability was a place I needed to be comfortable with and learn to reside in this year. I needed it to march me into the things God has called me to do. He used this surgery to show me just that. It’s OK not to know everything, it’s OK to ask for help, to depend on others, and the biggest for me, is to let others in. He couldn’t use me until I let my guard down and started sharing my struggles and come out of my own box.

I spent a week in the hospital learning to embrace this change. Learning that even in my own marriage I had put on armor, a defense that I had it all together, that I didn’t need help. In that week of prayer I began releasing my vulnerability in prayer with God and asked for strength to do it in all of my relationships beginning with my marriage and also in friendships. I’ve experienced so much growth in this area this year and I’m so glad all of this came from the fact I needed care for simple basic needs.

I knew God needed me to get to this place for growth so that He could position me in a place to be a mouthpiece for Him. So He stripped me of the very thing that stood in the way of me and His people, my own self, my pride. I had heard from God years ago to step out in ministry, to tell my story to others, but I was disobedient because it required me to open myself and my life to others and I wasn’t ready to do it. Well I’m now in a place where I feel like I have no other choice. I recall the first day I began telling people I was an ovarian cancer survivor, the day I put it on social media to tell others about God’s saving grace, the fact that after all I had been through I didn’t look like it. I looked untouched. That’s because of His grace and mercy and ultimately my obedience to His will. My vulnerability became my biggest blessing and I pray that because of it those blessings spill over unto others, my readers, my followers online and those near and dear to me as well.