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When I am weak I am strong |
 It was a stifling day in June 2007 and I was visiting my parents in the States. We had just been to my brother’s wedding and were enjoying our time together as a family. Life was good and I was looking forward to an action-packed summer.
So I wasn’t too worried that day, the first time I felt an odd lump just below my ribcage. It seemed small and harmless, but as the weeks wore on, I started to get a sinking feeling. The lump was clearly growing. My GP sent me for lots of tests, so my summer revolved around needles and loud white machines. Several weeks later I was sitting with a consultant, a kind-faced surgeon. He said the words that are everyone’s nightmare: ‘You have cancer’. I was 32 years old, diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer. I had never been seriously ill, and hospitals made me feel queasy. Suddenly, I was preparing for major surgery and a life of fear-filled uncertainty. As you can imagine, the cancer diagnosis turned my whole world upside down. I had loved my work with young people, but it seemed as if that might be taken away forever. My travel plans, my hopes of getting married and having a family—everything seemed to have been yanked out of my reach in an instant. It was sometimes hard to pray. Whenever I talked to God I cried and told him I was just too weak to face the frightening possibilities that lay ahead. It’s been over a year since those horrible first days. I’ve had two operations and I’m undergoing chemotherapy, so the circumstances haven’t changed. But the strange thing is that, against all odds, my world isn’t crumbling anymore. I have down days, but there’s more joy than fear now. The challenges are the same, but what has changed is that I know what it feels like to live on the special strength God gives for tough times. There’s a passage in the Bible that describes how God’s power helps us in our weakness. Paul is pleading with God to take away a ‘thorn in the flesh’, which was probably some sort of physical problem. Paul writes this about God’s response: ‘He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.... For when I am weak, then I am strong’ (2 Corinthians 12 verses 9-10). Over the last year, I’ve felt weak and helpless in a thousand ways. But I’ve also clearly felt God’s strong arm holding me up when I’m falling down. He hasn’t left me to face this challenge in my own strength. And seeing God’s kindness and power daily has freed me up to find joy in his other gifts—of friends, sunny days, and the secure hope of a future with him. My life is different from what it was a year ago, but God is the same, and he’ll never let go of me.
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