We're currently building a railing on our back porch. Before starting the project, I spent quite a bit of time researching—meaning I watched YouTube videos of DIYers and scrolled thoroughly through the Home Depot product list. When I'd finished, I had a pretty clear idea what I wanted the railing to look like and a pretty vague idea of how to actually build it.
Thank goodness for father-in-laws. Mine drove three and a half hours two weekends in a row to help us. As he talked us through what the project would require and as we started work, I was amazed. The DIYers I had watched had done things very simply—screw this support into the deck here, build a hollow post there. They knew they were cutting corners, but their porches looked great—exactly like how I wanted. Their processes were the kind of work I could wrap my mind around, the kind I felt pretty comfortable jumping in and doing.
But Chuck and Joe went out there and my mind was boggled by the immensity and difficulty of what they took on with their bare hands and some carefully-selected tools. They took off the lattice siding, removed a giant support beam from under the porch, dug a three-foot hole at an awkward angle in its place, cut through the existing porch floor to send through new support beams, removed and later replaced heavy flagstone to have access to the space they needed to work on, busted up concrete, and did all of these things in multiple places around the porch perimeter.
I shy away from that kind of work. I'd hire it out, abandon the project, or cut corners first. It's the way it looks on the surface that matters, right?
This project is one of many ways that God has been revealing this weakness: my tendency to make the surface neat and pretty and stop there.
With my kids, it can be seen in desiring correct behavior (especially in public) more than desiring that their hearts are in the right place, or that they feel secure and rooted in our love in the present setting.
In hospitality, it can be working tirelessly to have my house clean, while neglecting to ready my heart to receive guests in the midst of their busy lives.
In my soul, it can be shying away from delving into a root issue (like this very weakness), and not taking the time in prayer and in silence to discuss it with the Lord and allow him to reveal it, then heal it.
Lucky for me, we needed a porch railing. And God can reveal and heal things in a construction zone just as easily as in silent prayer.
That's the great mercy that is just filling me up in life right now: the Theophany of Weakness, or rather the theophany in my weaknesses.
A theophany is when God reveals himself on earth in a way we humans can pick up on. There are several in Scripture, like the storm on Mt. Sinai when Moses goes up to receive the Ten Commandments and the cloud, voice, and dove at Jesus's Baptism. These theophanies were moments that happened in the lives of real people where God's presence broke through chaos, confusion, or just mundaneness to show Himself to those present. Why? To help them realize that He is present with them.
I have many moments, especially in parenting, where I am confronted with my weaknesses, like my settling for surface-living. I know I'm coming into the realm of a weakness or a wound—a root issue—when my reaction to what is in front of me is to resist the demand of what needs done, to suddenly feel fearful, or to feel angry at a level not corresponding with the present situation (which is often just a disguise for fear).
Each of these moments, occurring multiple times daily, are a real encounter with God: a theophany. He is there, in my weaknesses. It's as real an encounter—more real, actually—as running into someone you know at the grocery store. You turn a corner at a hard moment in your day, and boom. There Jesus is.
Already aware of that weakness, already in the process of healing it, already making up for it with His own strength.
That is why St. Paul boasts of his weaknesses and St. Therese has confidence in her littleness. Those moments of weakness are what make us holy.
And they don't even make us holy because they are a chance to grow and be better. That's just part of it. Mostly they make us holy because in them, we are with God. And just being with Him, whether in silent prayer or in a loud, chaotic moment of weakness, is enough. It's everything.
So that's my challenge to myself and to any readers who this resonates with. When confronted with your next weakness, recognize it for what it is: a theophany.
Sometimes my reaction to a hard moment is physical. I can feel tension in a particular part of myself. This might sound weird, but I think that's because, as humans, our bodies and souls are so integrated that the part of the body that feels tense is exactly where that particular weak spot of your soul is. And that's also where God is. Pause, enter that room interiorly, and just be with God. He is showing Himself to you. He is offering his help to manage the moment. But He's also just sidling over on a comfy seat for two and offering you the seat next to Him.
Photos of my partially-painted porch rails are not interesting, so here's a topic-adjacent photo of my son being helped, in his weakness of not being able to walk, by his Father.
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