#Empowered

This post is for the Made to Crave Blog Hop. I'm exploring #Empowered and what this word means to me.

I used to think that being empowered was feeling strong and powerful and able to take on the challenges of life. Knowing that I had full agency and responsibility for myself. Knowing that I could definitely handle what would come my way because I was strong and competent.

Now that I have returned to being a Christian, I have an entirely different view of empowerment. To me being empowered is feeling strong and powerful not in my own strength but "powered by the Holy Spirit". And even in my weakness--especially in my weakness--I can still be strong because Jesus is being strong through me. He enables me. Every single minute. Through each of the challenges of life. This was true before of course, but I just didn't know it! And He doesn't let a challenge come to me unless it is truly for me--something He has designed or allowed to come my way. So I am always safe and secure if I rely on Him. Paradoxically, this makes me vastly stronger than I was before, because I have a different fuel source.

These beliefs are unusual or strange or even disempowering to many people, I know, because they were so to me before. I would rather just be empowered in my own strength and not mess with Jesus, or let Him do what He wanted but not get too close or involved. That has changed...

Now I know with certainty that I can handle what comes my way because in Him I am strong and competent. This does not disempower me in any way. It does not limit me. It does not weaken me by making me use patriarchal beliefs as a crutch or as a weird safety thing because I cannot handle life. It is the opposite, but you really have to try it to know that.

It is one of those things that sounds kooky when you read it but when you get it by trying it--you wonder why you wasted so much time doing other things. It empowers me to be fully who I am and who I was created to be. It also feels very good. Scary-good. But good. It is a better way of life than what I had before. I always like to follow the way of life that empowers me to live the most abundant, empowered, and peaceful life possible. A close, intimate, intense relationship with Jesus is absolutely it. This is empowerment.

~Photo by the amazing photographer LoveHubbie (this is a blogging nickname I've had for my husband ever since I started blogging)