Excerpts from a great speech.

December 03, 2013
BYU Devotional

"For When I Am Weak,
Then Am I Strong" Gerald Causse

"When you look in the mirror each morning, what do you see? We are such a blend of multiple and diverse talents, traits, and attributes. All of us have abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and inadequacies. However, getting objective and accurate evaluations of our own selves is difficult. While some take an indulgent and embellished look at themselves and overestimate their strengths, others focus on their weaknesses and doubt their own abilities.

One of the most comforting teachings of the gospel is that each son and daughter of God—every one of us—is born with an inheritance of gifts, talents, and abilities that can help us through our earthly mission. The scripture says, “For there are many gifts, and to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God.”⁷ We cannot be happy and successful in life without gratefully acknowledging those gifts and doing all we can to develop them. Our problem is never that we have no strengths; the problem comes when we do not recognize our strengths and build upon them.

In order to become strong in the Lord, we need to recognize our personal limitations. For some, one of life’s greatest challenges is accepting their own limits. Because of pride, they prefer to see themselves as bigger, stronger, and more capable than they really are. They want to create this illusion both to impress others and especially themselves.

I would like to share an experience from my youth. When I was fifteen, I noticed that my vision was getting progressively worse. At the time, for a reason that I have a hard time understanding now, I didn’t want to recognize nor accept it. I hid the truth from my relatives and teachers, and my life began to get more and more difficult. Being unable to read the chalkboard, I had to copy over the shoulders of my classmates. When on the street, I was no longer able to read signs and traffic signals, which caused me to take the wrong bus many times and get lost.

Several months passed before a medical checkup in high school liberated me from my secret. I had to resign myself to wearing a magnificent pair of glasses, which, to my great surprise, made life much more practical and enjoyable than I had imagined!

One reason we may not want to acknowledge our personal limitations is that weakness is perceived by society as a fault or a failure. The world values the cult of the invincible. Superheroes, from Batman to Superman, abound in our media. This ideology leads to dangerous behavior. We see people who want to hide their problems under the appearance of strength through boasting, aggressiveness, or abusive behaviors. Some are so obsessed with outperforming others that they turn to drugs or other stimulants in order to do so. Still others lose themselves in egotism and self-admiration. These forms of pride lead to disappointment, ineffectiveness, or worse.

God is not the God of superheroes, nor of people without weaknesses. Such beings do not exist! God helps people like you and me, those who recognize their limits and the weakness of their condition and seek His help and guidance. Failing to recognize our limitations will block our progression. On the other hand, accepting them humbly lays the foundation for eternal progression.

Recently I had the opportunity to interview Gaël Yonnet. Gaël is a former BYU student from France. At the age of thirty-one, while he was in his final year of medical school, he participated in a snowboard competition at Snowbird. It turned out to be tragic for him. He missed his second jump and crashed from a height of forty feet onto the icy snow below. When he regained consciousness, he realized that he had lost feeling in his lower limbs. After four years of medical studies, Gaël understood what pain in his stomach and numbness under his belly button meant. He was indeed paralyzed.

Gaël said that on the day following his accident, he awoke with feelings of intense distress. He thought to himself, “There are many simple things in life, such as going to the bathroom, that I can no longer do on my own. If that is how I am going to have to live, maybe it’s better for me to die.”

Shortly thereafter he met another patient at the hospital who was a quadriplegic. That patient confided in him, “I would so much like to have arms like yours.” This was a key moment for Gaël. If someone could be envious of what he had, he should be grateful to still have it!

Gaël testifies:

We all want something more. I believe that is human nature. But I discovered that the key to happiness is to accept ourselves as we are, to be content and to live with what we have. I miss my legs terribly. But, in the end, I don’t have any other choice but to move forward and try to be happy without them.

During the time he was at the hospital, he learned more about pain and about caring for patients than he could have learned in several years of medical school. Gaël decided to specialize in rehabilitative medicine. Today he is a renowned doctor who works with patients suffering from spinal injuries, amputations, strokes and seizures, and multiple sclerosis. His patients praise his empathy and his ability to understand their problems. For Gaël, the acceptance of his limitations was the starting point for his own exceptional progress.

Another important point to remember is that we usually experience our greatest growth when we face difficult, if not impossible, situations. The acute awareness that we have of our own limitations pushes us to humbly seek the help of our Creator. An example of this is found in the Old Testament, when Gideon, head of the Israelite armies, prepared to fight the Midianites with 32,000 men.

But the Lord said to Gideon, “The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me.”¹³

So, step-by-step, the Lord asked Gideon to reduce the number of his soldiers until only 300 remained. It is when it became impossible for Gideon to conquer the Midianites with his own strength that the Lord sent him to battle and miraculously delivered the enemy into his hands.

My brothers and sisters, you probably have had this type of experience yourselves. The Lord often places His servants in situations with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. In this manner He pushes us to humble ourselves and to rely solely on His strength. He makes us instruments of His miracles and the manifestations of His power and compassion."