"My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Beware to all who dare to pray, "Lord, keep me humble."
In answer to that innocent prayer, God dropped a bomb called EMOTION that drove away all control and reason from my ordinarily logical being.
A few weeks ago, I left Yankee country to participate in the Atlanta Children's Institute. No, I was not staff-- I was a teacher, who wore "nah-vy blue" and white, cut crafts, wracked my brain to keep the little boys entertained and controlled, and adjusted to the Southern drawl.
This CI served families that attended the Basic Seminar and the Anger Resolution Seminar. I taught Team A1 (Basic Seminar children), so my responsibilities began Monday. The Anger Res Seminar began Thursday, so the staff tried valiantly to recruit new teachers for those children. The Lord gave us three. As last resort, the staff pulled a few Basic Seminar teachers and placed them on brand new teams. Guess who became leader of Team A2? Little ol' moi.
I gathered my things in a daze, trying desperately to maintain control. But as I thought about leaving my team (which included a set of quadruplets-- my quad-shot macchiato-- and a pair of non-identical twins), working with a new assistant, meeting new children, creating a new lesson plan, and doing things like making new bathroom passes, EMOTION hit the pit of my stomach like lead and began to wreak havoc. When my good friend Sarah caught me in the hall and asked, "Karen Chen, are you OK?" I lost it.
With tears streaming down my face, I assured her that I'd be fine. I just needed alone time to regain composure. But when I beheld my bloodshot eyes and bright red nose in the bathroom mirror, I knew it was a lost cause. After fighting back tears for five to ten minutes, I reconciled myself to the reality that I would NOT be able to control myself, and my assistant was going to see me at my worst.
I took a few deep breaths and proceeded towards the classroom. My assistant was already in there cutting crafts for the evening. I nearly sobbed out my greeting:
"Hi, my name is Karen, and I'm not usually like this, but I'll be OK. Really." I added that last word to convince myself more than anyone else.
She looked back and replied calmly, "My name is Brianne. So is this your first CI?"
I choked back both tears and laughter and replied, "No." Somehow I survived the next five minutes until she left for dinner. The empty classroom, however, taunted me with how I had become "high maintenance" and "the point of weakness," so I sought refuge in the only secluded place I could think of... the church graveyard.
I settled down on a granite block and played with the angel hair spaghetti Ginny had gotten for me. Gazing out over the tombstones, I imagined the crises those people had lived through-- war, miscarriage, terminal illness... My musings mercifully led me away from myself to the feet of our Lord. He reminded me that I had asked for humility. He assured me that my worth lay not in what I could accomplish but rather in who I was in Him. What others thought did not matter. There in the graveyard, I learned to surrender my pride and embrace my weakness. And then He began to dry my tears.
I returned to my room a calmer emotional wreck, and there on the white board I found a message from Sarah: "Karen, come find me. I have comassive info."
That "comassive info" was the staff decision to switch me back to my team and make one of my Team A1 assistants the leader of Team A2. I cringed at the thought of them making adjustments for me, but I faced my weakness and accepted it as God's measure of grace for me.
Perhaps no one will ever know just how much the Lord glorified Himself that evening, but I went home much more aware of how utterly helpless I am without Him... and that was exactly where He wanted me.
"...for when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:10).
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Soul Lemonade, No. 5
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
