What If Our Greatest Strength Hides WITHIN Our Greatest Weakness?

Photo by Dave Fayram

So I don't always do things at a blistering fast speed.

In fact, that's a bit of an understatement.

So is that.

I like to think I do things thoroughly and thoughtfully, but my friends like to call that "being really slow."

In high school, a few of my friends chose to give me the nickname "Sammy the Sloth" because of how slow I did everything. I was the last person to finish every test, I was the last person to arrive AND leave, and I really just had a fairly slow walking speed to top it all off.

It didn't stick very well, seeing as how Tim is much easier to say. But it was the principle.

It was all well and good, but at some point I began to wonder why I couldn't do things faster. I mean, sometimes it would REALLY come in handy. That book I'm trying to write? Maybe it could be done by now. The 50 books I'm trying to read? Maybe I could be on number 25 instead of number 8. I just care about details more than other people do. I don't want to glaze over things.

That, and I've got a stellar case of ADD.

Attention Deficit is one of the things that slows me down. Because I know I'm susceptible to missing details, I make up for it by double checking the crap out of my work. But sometimes, my thoroughness comes at the cost of extra time.

My False Name

I've been living with a name being whispered in my ear every time I miss an important detail or crucial instruction. That name is Inattentive. It's a name I have carried with me ever since that time in third grade when I started being ADD medicine kid.

I had gotten used to it. After all, there were other names I was fighting that were way more hurtful throughout my life, such as Stupid, Insufficient, or "Not Fun To Be Around." Inattentive was on the back burner.

But God began to root out those false names throughout high school and college, and he wasn't going to leave Inattentive there to fester.

My True Name

One day, while I was at a worship gathering called Love War in Knoxville, I heard the most peculiar thing. Not with my ears, but with something else. And what I heard was this:

 Attentive One.

Well that's weird! There's no way that's referring to me! I've got ADD, for crying out loud! That's gotta be the last thing someone would use to describe me. But it wouldn't go away. And somewhere in myself, I knew it was true. I knew God had said it, so it had to be. But HOW, God? How is this true about me? The evidence didn't seem to add up...

Let me tell you about why I'm Attentive One.

I might have ADD, but because of it I've become extremely sensitive to the small details. And as I've begun to notice the small things people can tend to rush past, I've become passionate about not missing them. This is why I read slowly -- I am meticulous about the minute.

God's made me passionate about milking my time with him for all it's worth. He's made me the guy that stays for an extra hour longer because I don't like to miss any of the little stuff. And I believe because of that, God "shares his secrets with me," as my wise friend Kristin put it.

Here's something else Kristin taught me.

The person God says we are often looks opposite of the person we've come to believe we are.

Who would have thought I was Attentive when I am stuck with Attention Deficit? But we see this kind of thing in scripture too. I mean, look at Peter. He wavered in his faith so much that he denied he even knew his best friend Jesus three times, and then Jesus called him Rock. He told Peter, "You are the Rock on which I'm going to build my church." 

For a long time, one of my best friends was super frustrated by his tendency to be a people pleaser. One day he told me, "I hate this part of me. I just want to kill it." But in shutting that part of himself off, what else would he be shutting off? What if he would be shutting off one of his greatest assets? 

What if our greatest weaknesses are the natural dark side of our greatest strengths?

We people pleasers may run ourselves into the ground out of fear sometimes, but what if that fear wasn't there? What if Perfect Love were to come along and cast out that fear? Then we'd be left with a gift of loving people that the rest of our community would be left in awe of.  People pleasers who've been freed from fear are quite a sight to behold.

Where might a strength be hiding in the place you hate most about yourself?

Could it be that this strength might be deeply needed by everyone else?