The Strength That Is Only Nowhere To Put It Down

Somebody said it again on Saturday, in a kitchen, with about forty portions of rice going into foil trays.

You are the strongest woman I know.

She said something back that made two people laugh and kept moving trays, and inside her the same sentence went round that has been going round for about two years, which is: that is not strength, that is a shortage of options.

She has thought about this carefully and she is not being modest. Strength, as she understands it, means a person could stop and chooses not to. She cannot stop. There is nobody else to do the rice, nobody else to sit with her father on Thursdays, nobody else on the account at the bank. Every single thing she is admired for is a thing that would simply not happen if she did not do it, and doing what would otherwise not happen is not a virtue, it is arithmetic.

And the compliment lands on her like a small bill every time, because it thanks her for a quality and the quality is not there.

You know that sentence. Somebody names strength in you and you can see, quite clearly, that what they are looking at is a person with nowhere to put anything down.

Say what the arithmetic costs

Nobody in that kitchen has counted it, so let us.

It costs her Thursdays, and it costs her the two hours on Saturday mornings, and both of those are visible.

What is not visible is the cost of being thanked for a thing she does not have. Every compliment widens the distance between the woman in that kitchen and the woman they are talking to, and after two years the distance is wide enough that she has stopped trying to close it.

And it costs her something harder. If she is not strong, and the going on is only arithmetic, then she has no idea what would happen if the arithmetic ever changed. She has never tested herself and she does not want to and there is a low fear underneath the whole thing that she is not built for any of this and has simply not been found out.

You have been running on arithmetic and calling it nothing, and God has never once needed you to be strong for anybody. Psalm 103:14 says He knows our frame and remembers we are dust, and His Spirit is the one who takes frame off a page and puts it in a kitchen with forty foil trays on a Saturday. He has never once mistaken you for the trays.

Treasure in earthen vessels, and why the jar matters

There is one line built for a woman who knows exactly what is in her.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.2 Corinthians 4:7

Notice that the jar is not apologized for. The verse does not say we have this treasure in unfortunately weak vessels which we hope to improve. The earthenware is load bearing in the argument: the whole point is that the container is obviously ordinary, so that nobody looking at it can mistake the contents for something the pot produced.

Which means her honesty about the shortage of options is not a problem to be talked out of. It is accurate reporting on the jar, and the same Spirit is the one who makes the next clause land: the power is of God and not of us, which is exactly what she has been saying for two years without knowing it was Scripture.

You have been telling the truth about the jar the entire time, and the truth about the jar is the design rather than a fault in it. That is not a way of talking somebody up. The written word puts the ordinariness of the container at the center of the argument, and the Spirit is the one who has been the power in a woman who never once had a choice about stopping.

And the plain thing has to be said. The relief is not that you really are strong and should accept the compliment. You may not be strong; nobody in that kitchen is. The relief is that the going on was never coming out of the pot.

Not being able to stop is not the same as being strong, and He knows that

There is a fear here worth naming exactly, because it is the load bearing one.

The fear is that she is untested. That everything anybody admires is compulsory, and that on the day something becomes optional she will find out there was never anything in her, and that will be worse than never having been praised at all.

You are not untested, and the going on for two years was not compulsion wearing a costume, it was something arriving in a woman who had nothing. Isaiah 40:29 says He gives power to the faint and increases strength where there is no might, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes to the faint a category she qualifies for rather than a description of somebody more spiritual.

One plain sentence before we go on. If the low fear has gone somewhere heavier, if there are hours where carrying on is genuinely a question, please tell one real human being today, and if it is urgent, call your doctor or a crisis line before you go to that kitchen. That is not the arithmetic failing. That is God sending help with a face on it, and reaching for it is obedience rather than collapse.