Strength in Weakness

There are two ways that we view people: weak and strong.

We tend to find weakness in ourselves first.

The easiest place to describe such weakness is in our physical abilities. With the winter Olympics going on, it is very easy to look up at the screen and watch the athletes perform to their best ability and then look down at the couch and see our weakness. I can’t downhill ski, let alone stand negative windchill.

Some of us will decide that maybe if we just try a little harder that we too can be as strong as everyone around us. So we get to the gym, pick up a pair of dumbbells that are much smaller than the ones around us, and attempt to be better.

Then, as we struggle to stand beside the strong people beside us, we start to give up little by little…until the next Olympic Games wherein we feel like lazy slobs again.

This phenomenon does not just happen in the physical realm. We see people who are excelling in their careers, and we attempt to move forward before we even have a position open. We see people in stronger relationships than us, and we fumble around trying to find something that does not exist. 

We see the joy in others, and after trying everything within our visible grasp, we stop believing that we could be happy too.

However, there is a way for this doubt to be quelled: we get help.

Let’s go with an example from the physical realm. When a person hits a rut in their physical fitness, they either get a friend to help them find new ways to work out, or they can hire a personal trainer to improve their form. With the help of someone who is a little stronger than us, we gain knowledge that allows us to improve. The stronger person can see weaknesses to those who ask for their help, and with their support and experience, their trainee can become the person they were meant to be: healthy and happy.

However, finding weaknesses in others can come from two places. 

The first, with the physical trainer, is coming from belief. 

The second, which I will describe next, comes from doubt.

Sometimes, when we have failed in certain areas of our lives, we allow ourselves to remain in a state of doubt and sorrow. We give up on happiness, on joy rather, and our entire selves conform to this false conviction that we will never be happy. 

And if we cannot be happy, then there must be something fundamentally wrong with the people around us. No one could possibly be that happy.

“They must be faking it,” we tell ourselves

Suddenly the strength in others becomes a lie. With this lie in our hearts, we start to see our own strength as a great virtue. No way could my talents and my experiences and my emotions be fake! As we accept this false conviction, we tell ourselves that we must be better that everyone around us.

“I don’t need their strength. They need mine,” becomes our mantra.

And so we start to “look for problems” in other people.

My strength is joy. This joy has been in my heart for my entire life. Fueled by faith in Jesus Christ, I have no reason to be sad, at least not for a long time. I know that whatever happens to me that I will always be loved by my Father in Heaven and that I belong in any location.

I did not create my joy; it was a gift from God, and I cannot explain it beyond that point.

This joy draws people in. Whether they are happy already or if they are searching for joy in their lives, they come to me for a laugh and a smile. They do not stay for very long, but there is always an interesting soul or two in my life. Some come from faith and others have no knowledge of God’s love for them.

Regardless, I have always made friends through the joy God gave me.

But I still experience low moments.

When I was younger, like in high school and early college, I thought that my sorrow would go away if I “fixed” everyone’s problems. After all, the most tragic life stories filled my phone’s inbox every night, and people always said they felt better after talking to me. I figured that my joy would be complete if I made everyone else happy.

I got a rush just listening to people as they cried and told me their darkest secrets.

But I wasn’t happy.

No one had fun with me, and I did not understand why. If I could make people come to understand that they were wonderfully made and worth all of the love in the world, then why couldn’t I play with them or go to their parties or be around them in a simple scenario?

Thankfully I have an amazing “life trainer” aka “Mommy.” My mother knows that I can be a great friend because I love my siblings. Therefore, because she believed in my potential, she exposed my weakness.

“You’re exhausting Felicity,” my mom told me one day. I was confused; I didn’t really do anything other than talk to people.

My mother lovingly explained how it was difficult to talk to me because every conversation turned in to something deeper. Much like overworking a muscle to the point of injury, I forced people to find problems in their lives that may or may not exist. Because I wanted to make my joy “better,” I forced other people to lessen themselves.

I have better friendships than ever because my mom found my weakness in belief and not in doubt.

The question we have now is: how do I help those through belief and not in doubt? How do I overcome my own doubts in order to help others become the best-version-of-themselves?


My Dear Readers, you are well on your way. First, we have to accept our strengths. We are all gifted in one way or another, and we should celebrate that. Second, we have to acknowledge that we had to find and develop our strengths.

No strength came without a little effort.

Think of the Olympians; they are always practicing.


See your weaknesses, overcome them with those who are stronger than you, and then believe in others. Believe that even though someone else is weak that they too may be able to do what they dream to do. Believe in the strength in those in front of you, even if it means that you have to reveal your weaknesses.

My lab has done wonders to teach me the principle of "failing with style." Science fails all the time, but if we are open about our issues and troubleshoot as a community, then not only do we fix our problems, but we also help others avoid running in to the same pitfalls.

To have someone who is far more gifted than you ask for your help, even though you are still learning, is one of the greatest ways to show someone that you believe in them and that they will be successful some day.

When we show someone that we believe in them, they soar to the highest heights.

The best example I have of this happened last week with my new sophomores.

They are all incredibly gifted, and they are equally motivated to work. However, there is hestitation in some of their hearts. They do not want to fail, and they do not want me to see them struggling. Unbeknownst to them, I gave the team the hardest technique in our lab as their "training" experiment.

I had no clue if they were going to be able to perform the experiment, but I believed that with a little bit of encouragement that they could succeed. After all, my senior undergraduate got the hardest cloning project as her first project in the lab, and she came up with a novel signaling pathway because of it.

I believed in my little ones before they believed in themselves.

When it came time to image, one of the students sat at the microscope with shaky hands. I knew that she was the best read and most familiar with imaging out of the group, but the doubts in her mind were taking over. She kept looking at me over and over, asking if I could help her find the perfect cell.

I smiled, and instead of letting her doubts win, I told her that she had plenty of time and I patiently waited until she found a perfect cell to image.

However, even after I praised her work, she still seemed doubtful. Not wanting to give up on my student, I told her that that time-lapse movie would be used in a presentation that evening to all of the TA's and the professor. I told my student that I believed in her enough to risk scrutiny and personal failure.

My student's eyes lit up at the words, and she continued to work. She found several more cells to image, but it was not her immediate success that mattered. What mattered was what she did next.

My student stopped working, looked over at her teammate, and asked her if she would like to try.

The teammate had failed to take any images, and we were running out of time. Anyone else would have kept working. They would have doubted the teammate. However, because my student felt believed in, she wanted to instill that same feeling in her teammate's heart.

Together they completed the hardest technique in our lab.

Not because of their weaknesses, but in spite of them. Not because of their doubts, but belief in one another.

I could not have been more proud of my team.

We need to believe in others, and we need to be patient with them. They will come to us in their weakness, but only if we believe in their strengths. No one wants to be pitied. By believing in the joy of others, in the potential of others, the talents of others, we can grow in courage, and we can help one another defeat our greatest weaknesses.

So stop trying to find weaknesses in others.

Find strengths and believe in them.