When I gave birth to my youngest, Libby, I was slammed with an awful case of anxiety.  Having faced anxiety in the past, I knew my opponent.  However, this time it came out with it's guns loaded full throttle and I was prey that demanded to be taken down.  For six weeks, I felt as if I had a target on my back and in my heart that kept being pelted by attacks - over and over - and over and over.  I was so tired of running I literally thought I would die.  My mind was wasted.  My body was disturbed.  I didn't trust my emotions.  I was a mess.


I thought it was my battle.  I thought it was my responsibility to go to war every day armed with scripture to take captive the thousands (literally) of thoughts that ran like enemy rogues in my head.  Yet this time, I had nothing left to give, fight with, stand against.  I.was.tired.

It was in this season (and can I just say that all enemy attacks have their seasons - they don't last forever) that God displayed His "I AM A MIGHTY WARRIOR" characteristic in a way I had never experienced.  I learned that in my weakness, in my break-downs in the shower under the safety of running water that muted my pitiful cries for help, God injected power into my situation.  I emerged six weeks later as a new person.  God won my battle.

How?  Weakness.  When I am strong, I am very strong.  I know I can leap mountains, scale buildings, bake brownies, and win Mom of the Year all while wearing pearls and having good hair and kissing hubby at the end of his hard work day and make him glad I'm a woman.  But, when I am weak, I am very weak.  No leaping, scaling, baking, winning, wearing, having, kissing goes on for weakness trumps willingness to pull it all together.

Yet, weakness also sets aside "me" for "Him".  When He's all I have, He's all I get.  And when He's all I get, I am no longer weak.  Body, mind, and brownie-making ability all gets sorted out and put into the right places under His strength.  My mouth gives proper credit to a Creator who performs on my behalf because body knows how weak it is.

Gideon (Judges 7) experienced the same thing.  32,000 soldiers had been prepped and waited to do battle against an army that compared itself to a vast hoard of locusts.  Yikes!  I'm thinking 32,000 didn't stand a chance.  And yet, God reduced that number of testosterone warriors to 10,000.  Why?  "If I let all of you fight the (enemy), the Israelites will boast to me that they saved themselves by their own strength."

Get it?  In a culture that values hard-work, self-made people, can do attitudes, we did it our way philosophies, God says something else.  Let ME do all the work.  Let ME fight your battle.  Let ME be God and you be child.  Counter culture.  God's culture.

When God wins the battle, it's finished.  What six weeks of mental mind games and gut-wrenching heart-ache paired with uncontrolled panic and anxiety set out to do - destroy - God used for my good.  He destroyed things that I could have never fought against.  He transformed my mind, bypassed many a heart-ache, put panic and anxiety in it's proper place (under His feet) and brought me to a new place.  That's what He does.  God's culture.

But wait there's more ... Next time.
Christina