Be Strong
As I stood with my daughter at the starting line of the 5K race, I reminded her of our running strategy: slow and steady. Yet as soon as the gun went off, she immediately forgot our game plan and sprinted off like a cat with its tail on fire. When I finally caught up to her around the one mile mark, she was spent. Barely moving forward, she begged to sit down or walk the rest. Sensing a life lesson in the making, I reminded her of our original agreement - that we could jog slowly, but we wouldn’t walk. She scowled, but continued to plod along. Ten minutes later, with another mile still to go before the finish, her attitude took a turn for the worse. “I can’t go ANY further! This is too hard!” she howled as 80-year-old grandmas and moms pushing jogging strollers overflowing with kids passed us with ease. “You CAN do this, and you WILL do this,” I reassured her. “Repeat after me: I am tough. I am strong. I can do this.” “I am tough. I am strong. I can do this,” she repeated back to me. We sang this simple cadence back and forth to each other until our feet crossed the finish line together a short time later. “I told you!” I cheered, “I knew you could do it."
I knew those affirmations would carry her across the finish line because they’d worked countless times in the past when I found myself pushed to my physical, emotional, or spiritual limit. For me, it’s in my darkest head spaces, when I feel exhausted, weak, or in pain and I cry out “I can’t DO THIS ANYMORE!” that I hear God’s voice the loudest. Sometimes He speaks the hard truths to me I won’t listen to until I’m too tired to cover my ears anymore. Sometimes He reminds me of seasons when, with his help, I overcame struggle or humbled myself enough to reach out to others. But most often, He plants the simple reminders in my heart that He made me and that He knows me better than I know myself - so when He says I’m tough enough, and strong enough, and that I can do this with his help, I should believe Him.
God created us and therefore knows us inside and out. In his mercy He has made available to us, in His word, in our hearts, in our bodies, and through our relationships with others, all the strength we need to rise up and embrace the tough, strong mothers that we are inside. Each morning, as we get out of bed, we can thank God for another day to live and breath and simply be - and we can choose to hear His loving cadence singing in our ears…You are tough. You are strong. You can do this!
“Surely you have instructed many, and you have strengthened weak hands. Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have strengthened the feeble knees.” Job 4:3-4
