When Strength Becomes Weakness

Alfonso Wyatt, Columnist

Please be aware that it is possible for your strength to become a weakness. Does this sound like an oxymoron? It is possible for the gift that makes you a strong individual, spouse, friend, or leader to boomerang, hemming you into an undesirable place. This gift can eventually derail efforts. You may have experienced this phenomenon and were unaware of what was happening. If this is not registering for you, please read on.

Strength to Weakness Mini-Case Analysis

You are the “go-to” problem-solver in your family and inner circle of friends. Your phone is always ringing, chirping, and vibrating day into night. You never refuse a request to help others until you sadly discover you have no strength for yourself. You begin to step back from the crowd, a behavior that counters how others know you. The people who depend on you are worried. Their concern is that their warrior has become a worrier. You, the once strong person, do not have anyone to reach out to for help because you never needed to cultivate a personal support system. Your strength has become your weakness.

You are a visionary known for clearly seeing what others fail to see. As a result, you tend to attract other visionaries-in-training around you. Words like intuitive, brilliant, and profound strengthen your desire to see more possibilities. You love seeing visions and dreams, but you do not love doing the work to make dreams become reality. You have resigned to fall in love with the next great idea. Your strength has become your weakness. You have been an “earth angel” to many friends and family members through your generous offering of time, talent, and treasure. You will give your last dollar to a stranger. Giving makes you feel better about yourself and the world. Unfortunately, a series of unforeseen incidents now render you in dire need of assistance. In your forced solitude, it has become clear that while you are adept at giving to others, you never learned how to give to yourself. You do not know where to turn or how to ask for help. Your strength has become your weakness.

Finding people who love talking about their strengths is not difficult. We can find “strengtheners” sharing their prowess and success on their blogs, websites, Facebook, Twitter, or via old fashion one-sided conversations. What we hardly hear, or find in abundance, are people strong enough to admit they have a weakness. Before you look for others who may have succumbed to this heretofore-undiagnosed strength-to-weakness malady, look at yourself first. Has your strength ever become a weakness? When did it happen? How did it happen? What did you do, if anything, to keep it from happening again?

If you see weakness only as personal failure and not as an opportunity to learn and grow, you may continue taking desperate actions in the face of seemingly insurmountable trouble. Your fighting spirit will not allow you to back up, give up, look up, or be self-reflective. You are so used to being right it never comes to your mind that you cannot “power out” or figure a way out of your present pressing situation. Please know that your strength has become your weakness.

9 …“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NRSV) ❏ ❏ ❏