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This month has been anything but June gloom. Not only have there been unseasonably warm spans of days that have turned into weeks, but there has also been a sunny, revolving door at the Stockfisch home for visitors ranging all the way from Florida to Arizona. We have housed meaningful conversations, bbq’s, FCA prayer meetings, loud laughter, old friends, and shopping bags. Many a tired head have collapsed on the guest bed, air mattress or couch, sleeping soundly after a buzz of activity and reconnection.

I absolutely love housing these faces, hearing their voices and knowing their hearts. But one thing I am not is a natural hostess. I embrace guests. I love how they bless our home with their unique passions, and get to leave filled up on Christ’s love and deep-dish pizza. I love the crash-course of catching up and the late nights that organically call for late mornings. But despite the ministry God’s called me to, and the people that I cannot live without, I am convinced more now than ever that I am one hundred percent introverted. I gain energy in the quiet. I lavish in the alone time. I am restored in the stillness. And sometimes I feel like an introvert thrown into an extraverted calling.

Today, I am tired. I’m flat and exhausted. Bruised (literally for those of you that know the train station story) and battered. I’m coming face to face with my frailty and getting to know my weakness on a very personal level. So on a cloudy day in June, I am sitting awhile in my weakness. I’m not going to sweep it under the living room rug, or turn on the smile to reveal a façade-driven, stronger self. I am weak. I am unable. I have an expiration of self-sufficiency, and a line in the sand of personal power. My own strength has been steadily decreasing and in a bizarre turn of events, I feel strangely secure in my delicacy.

In John 3:30, John the Baptist talks about how we must decrease so Christ can increase within us. In 2 Corinthians 12:9, Paul talks of how the grace of Christ is sufficient, and how his unmatched power is made perfect in our weakness. In Matthew 11:28 Jesus says one beautiful, hard, yet simple command, “Come.” Come to him, all who are weak and heavy laden and he promises us rest.

The tragedy is, I rarely sit in my weakness when I am not forced to. I freshen up, put on my big girl pants, and ride the train of self-reliance into the ground.

If I am not constantly, consistently, and whole-heartedly humbling myself before the cross, God will creatively find ways to get me to that spot. Pride comes before the fall, but it’s my stubborn human strength that makes me trip on the way down.

Without the abiding, abundant love of Christ, I am nothing. Nothing. But it is only when I make myself nothing that I truly can experience his love. Our God is full of these supernatural paradoxes, and I’m finding that the end of my rope is the beautiful beginning to the lifeline of Christ and his available power. So, the next time I sit across from a friend and pity the tough spot she’s in, I will rethink, budding with loving jealousy of the ways God is revealing himself to her. And the next time tears well up and stream down my face, I will see clearly through blur to the face of Christ, thankful for the avenues of weakness that lead straight into his glory. For when I am weak, then I am strong.