Strength and/or Weakness

‘The Green Lantern is a unique superhero because it's not that he's super that is his focus; it's that he's a man. He's very human. That's his greatest strength and his greatest weakness.’ ~Blake Lively

It is funny, isn't it, how so often our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness .... and also that which is most irritating to those around us.

You see this all the time. Someone comes through a medical crisis with flying colours. The health care team is impressed with their determination and drive to recover to their full potential. When they get home, they exasperate their family and care-givers with their continual pushing of the boundaries, beyond what common sense might dictate. BUT, when you look at it, that is exactly the character trait that got them where they are.

Perhaps you know a ‘Pollyanna’, someone who is so irritating to you with their continual insistence that ‘all will be well’; that ‘life’ is good; that ‘everything will work out for the best’. That sense of hope may be just the thing that got them, and you, through that dark time when all seemed to be in vain.

Even though Sally is a grown woman, she really irritates those she lives with by keeping a light on to chase away those things that go ‘bump’ in the night. But on the other hand, she has a constant stash of stories in her head to tell the children. or anyone who wants to be entertained. Her imagination is both a blessing and a curse.

That person who drives you insane because they are so detail oriented, is also the one who put together that amazing trip you went on last year.

I am an avid reader, no surprise to those who know me! Fiction or non-fiction, it doesn’t really matter. I have my favourites in both genres. As a school librarian I would read all the books on my shelves, the better to recommend them to the students. Left to my own devices I will read non-stop, going from one book right into the next. I have to make myself pause, take a break, when reading a book filled with new ideas/a denser read in order to let the ideas gel and to see what resonate with me. Otherwise I end up finishing the book but not having absorbed the material. I would rather spend a summer afternoon reading in the shade than sitting on the patio chatting with friends and family. Very annoying to those who live with me.

Jesus is remembered in the gospels with stories about the times he ignored rules, eating and drinking with outcasts, healing without pay and ignoring the common sense advice of his closest friends. That is what got him killed. It also is why his story still speaks to us today.

What is your greatest strength that also annoys the h#&% out of those closest to you?

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