What to do with weakness?

We are not the healers,
We are not the reconcilers,
We are not the givers of life.

We are

sinful,
broken,
vulnerable
people who need as much care
as anyone we care for.

Henri Nouwen

What to do with weakness?

I am privileged to serve women with developmental disabilities as a direct support professional.I have discovered that though my job will never make me feel glamorous or wealthy , the benefits outweigh the sacrifice.

For starters there’s

• the reward of knowing your work really matters to someone else,

• the thrill of watching another person surmount challenges achieve their goals,

• the love that comes with sharing your life with another person,

but what most blows me away--- what begs inside me to be shared is the wisdom these women teach me in regards to facing my own weakness.

When I switched careers to become a direct support professional I was completely burnt-out. Electing to leave my former job had left me really in touch with my own weakness and failure. The struggle had spiraled me into myself. Without a second thought I had put on my strong face and isolated.

I didn’t want to deal the fact that I had taken a risk to work in management at PSC and fallen flat on my face; I just wanted to feel capable again. So I selected a job I knew would fit my personality, one where I could care for people without having to take charge.

I started working at Disability Supports in the middle of a cold, McPherson February, and right away I noticed many of my co-workers wearing a sweat jacket designed by our agency which has printed on the sleeve “I am a hero.”

I asked myself, “Are we really heroes?”

And I realized we must be.

Anyone who sacrificially gives of himself to enable another person to have a better life is a hero.

I liked these jackets so much I even told Tim, “next year I want a hero-jacket because I want to inspire people in the community to make an effort to include people with disabilities,” and started saving up my incentive chips in hopes of earning one. It felt good to feel good about my work again.

Five months later I see things a little differently.

Don’t misinterpret me-- I love my job and I still agree that the men and women who work at Disability Supports are champions, but that is not the whole story.

But after working here five months I wish that our clients wore the same jacket

…because they are champions too.

Now that I know my clients better, I recognize is that anyone who has the vulnerability to allow another person to help her in her own home is showing that person a better way to live. The client is as much the hero as the support person.

In the past months I have struggled to find words to describe exactly how spending time with people who allow me to support them was transforming me until, prompted by a friend, I began reading Henri Nouwen. Celebrated priest and author, Nouwen served as a pastor in an intentional community of people with and without developmental disabilities. His books are rich with the life insights I have just begun to glean from the women I support. He explains that,

“Every time there are losses there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper”

When I read these words a light bulb turned on in my mind- Nouwen has captured the truth I am discovering here exactly. This is the wisdom the women I support are teaching me.

There are things which they will never be able to do, but instead of becoming bitter, instead of isolating, instead of giving up; my clients continue to give to others. I see now how because of their losses they have the opportunity to help others [including me] learn to love and sacrifice in ways that I never will. Their disabilities have indeed become passages to something wider and deeper.

… and it humbles me every time one of my clients, who will never have the same chances I do, chooses to smile my way because she knows that it will bring me joy.

Their candor has exposed to me the superficiality of independence.

I am also limited, in different ways--- and instead of allowing weakness to bring me to community I have chosen to close off. I have seen my limitations as thing to be hidden and worn independence to mask my prideful resistance to asking for help.

As I share life with these women it is so clear to me how in this fallen world everyone faces pain, and everyone is called on to comfort the pain of another. We were created for interdependence…

At times the strongest thing we are can do is to tell the truth about how weak

...how needy we are...

Helen Keller said, “I thank God for my handicaps, for, through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God.”

She is so strong.

I can’t honestly say that I’ve reached the point of embracing the weak and broken parts in me, but it has become my goal. I no longer want to be perfect, but real. I want to approach God believing that He will bless my pain [losses, imperfections, limitations, and handicaps] instead of trying to hide.

I want to approach the people around me in the same way. To stop pretending is the only step I know to take—it is my part in creating a community that embodies interdependent grace.

I have adopted “Your Grace is Sufficient, by Shane and Shane as my working song, and every week as I scrub my client’s bathroom floor I hum the melody in my head. The lyrics tumble in my mind “strength is made perfect when I am weak,”



and I think about the scriptures,

2 Corinthians 8-10:

Three different times I begged the Lord to take [the weakness given me] away. Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 4:6-11:

God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.

I pray for grace to let light pour through my cracks in my life.