What's your fatal flaw?

Virginia Woolf
Beethoven
John Keats
Robert Schumann
Ernest Hemmingway
Vincent Van Gogh
Abraham Lincoln
Isaac Newton
Sylvia Plath
Michelangelo
Winston Churchill
Leo Tolstoy
Vivien Leigh...

...People with mental illnesses enrich our lives.

It is a severe and terrible gift, one that must be held with fear and trembling. A gift that presents one with such a rich opportunity may be difficult to find elsewhere in the human experience. In our journey upon this Way, we strive to live in reliance upon the Father for our wellbeing and happiness, but most often, we choose instead the easy way and rely upon ourselves. The opportunity of which I speak is more a limiting of options. For those with the gift the choice to rely on oneself is a luxury that does not exist. For them, they experience in a most real, profound, and unpleasant way that I am not and cannot be the keeper of my own hope, life, and sanity. By necessity then --often by means of harsh and desperate moments-- you know you lack the ability to place your trust in you. It is true that there are then various other things, persons, and ideas that one might choose to place his or her trust. However, if the trust is placed in the One who is Truth, Light, and Hope, they have begun to receive and realize and the gift.

Experiencing my own emotional battle, surveying my own weaknesses, seeing blatantly my fatal flaws... and rejoicing.


Shalom