What is strength without a double share of wisdom? Vast, unwieldy, burdensome proudly secure, yet liable to fall.
--John Milton

What do we mean when we say someone is strong? That they have big muscles? Can endure anything without getting tired, let alone giving up? Do strong people never bend? Never break?

Some of us are afraid to show weakness of any kind. We take our supposed strength as the central fact of our lives. Over time, we may even come to think of ourselves as indestructible. We imagine that everything - people, places, and things - can be pounded into place if we come on with enough force. One man at a meeting shared that he had been confined to a hospital bed after a serious heart attack. Since he had been forbidden exertion of any kind, he said he made himself get out of bed, walk across the room, and pick up a scrap of paper from the floor. Just to prove that he could, he said.

Many of us are more like this man than we care to admit. May we, like him, become willing to accept our strength as our weakness, if that is the case.

Today, let me accept my very real and human limitations.