{simultaneously}

The rain was pouring down. It was the kind of rain that made you stop and listen. Thousands of raindrops fell on the roof and the concrete, creating a symphony of splashing harmony.

The soothing noise lulled me into an awareness of the sound patterns around me. The sound of the fan whooshing in its oscillating motion, metal clinking as I adjusted the weight on the dumbbells, and the sound of my breath slowing as I took time to appreciate the breeze the rain had brought.

I was working out for the first time in a while. My overly ambitious self wanted to pick up where I had left off months ago, but my keen mind chimed in and reminded me of the stiffened body that would result from pushing past my limit too quickly.

Limits.

As I secured my ear buds in place I felt my weaknesses and I simultaneously felt my strength. It was experiencing my limits that made me realize I had the strength to surpass them.

…power is perfected in weakness.

In acknowledging embracing my limitations, I am given access to strength and power. Not the kind that can lift cars, or change people’s minds, but the kind of strength and power that are only preceded and sustained by grace.

This grace which dismantles the influence of pride and fear; that declares the contraindicated equation: weakness = power.

This is the place where the impossible becomes possible and that possibility manifests the unattainable into accomplished. It is in this place of upside down thinking that walks me into an Upright Kingdom, one that is advanced through contradicting human logic by acknowledging my constant and desperate need for the One who is both powerful and gentle – both lion and lamb.

Weakness and Strength in their unmasked and glorious forms unveiled by the Sufficient Grace of a God who came to give life and life abundant.

It is in this simultaneous where life and life abundant are found. It is in those times of life where “both, and” are true, where masks hiding insecurity can be traded for painful and liberating vulnerability gifting us with the authenticity we were not only created with, but given the right to. Our authentic selves that can unashamedly declare our lack, our need, our fear, our shame, and trade it in for what we are not deserving of, but by birthright have been deemed worthy to receive.

Sufficient grace.

As we live in this place of the simultaneous, we are calibrating ourselves to the plumb line, the Unchanging and Eternal Consistent that meets us where we are and, simultaneously, taking us to the places we were created to be.

And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong. [2 Corinthians 12:9 & 10, NASB]