Lioness

You know that little feature on Facebook where it brings up a “memory” of something you posted on this date in a previous year? It’s an interesting little feature. Sometimes annoying; sometimes fascinating.

On January 2^nd, it reminded me of a meme I posted three years ago. A picture of a lioness (I’m assuming it’s a female lion because it has no mane . . . and because I needed it to be). She’s pacing toward the camera with narrowed eyes and determined steps. A feline warrior. The caption below her says, “2019: Thanks For The Lessons. 2020: Let’s Do This.”

Whoa . . . had we only known.

Here’s what fascinates me, folks. I shared that meme on January 2^nd, 2020, because I needed that cat to be ME. I knew what 2020 held for my life. I was in the process of a divorce which would be finalized that year. I was going to have to figure out how to live financially on my own. I would have to move, which meant finding a new place to live, getting rid of a lot of stuff, preparing my current house to sell, selling it . . . all of this stuff was absolutely terrifying. I expected 2020 to possibly be the most monumentally life-changing year ever for me. I desperately needed to figure out how to channel that warrior lioness in the picture.

What I didn’t know . . . what nobody knew . . . is what a monumentally world-changing year 2020 would be for everyone. I had to sell that house during a pandemic. My mediation for the divorce had to be done over Zoom. My teaching job suddenly went remote, and my workdays extended to seemingly never-ending. The earthquake that was now my life hit the top of its crescendo.

I knew 2020 was going to be hard. I just had no idea how hard.

But isn’t that always the case? Here we are starting a new year again: 2023. And of course, we have all sorts of hopes and dreams for making this the Best Year Yet. We've got resolutions, y'all! And doggone it, this time they're gonna stick! We've got a plan, we learned our lessons, we've paid our dues . . . but the truth is, by next Christmas, we'll be reflecting on the year that was and seeing all the adversity we could never have predicted. Blessings, yes, but only mixed in with a whole lot of hard.

Life is hard. This is reality. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how rich you are or how much you’ve prepared or how much you’ve prayed or how good a girl or boy you were this year . . . bad things are going to happen to you. Sometimes little annoying things, like a flat tire. Sometimes monumental, life-changing (or world-changing) terrible things, like a divorce or a pandemic. Bad things just keep happening.

It turned out that I need to fight harder through 2020 than I ever would have dreamed. And certainly harder than I thought I was capable of fighting. But here’s a secret: I actually don’t think I was capable of doing the things I did. What I discovered that year was not some depth of personal inner strength I didn’t know was there. What I discovered was that God’s supply of his strength for me has no limit.

Paul told the Corinthians that he was content to brag on his weaknesses because God’s power “is made perfect in weakness.” That’s comforting because I’m a weak woman. I want to believe that there's a secret warrior lioness hidden away inside, but really? No. The real me is a weak, frightened little kitten whose only hope is having God – the Warrior Lion living within me – fighting the battle of the bad things.

“Let’s do this,” he says. And we do. 

Not I. We.