Once you embrace your value, talents and strengths, it neutralizes when others think less of you.
True strength. There is no conflict with vulnerability or humility. Indeed, vulnerability and humility are essential here, and ultimately what makes strength true. One does not don the mask of strength in response to fear, which is a con, like those crazy small reptiles that stand up on their hind legs and spread useless wings to intimidate as a last resort. You stand there in self-respect for Christ’s sake and take it with some courage, responding in accordance with your honest values, taking sincere responsibility for them. Stand up for who you truly are, not the image you would like to sell, nor shrink to fit into the false harmony around you.
I am asked what strength is. Strength is the ability to not do to others only the things that were done to you. It is said, that you should “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, but strength takes that even further and says, “I can give more than what I received in life, I can be more than those who gave me little, I can do more for others than what was done for me.” Strength, though well aware of the pain that is aroused by drawing from a well that is not naturally replenished by others, continues to replenish that well so that it may draw from those beautiful innate waters, so that it may give to others even those things that were not given unto it.
In the world that we live in— purity and innocence are the true strengths. It is strength to live in a world like this and remain pure of heart, it is strength to live in a world like this and retain innocence. These are things that the world wants to take away from you, that experiences tend to alter and attempt to redefine. The wild ones aren’t the defiled ones— the wild ones are the pure ones, the innocent ones. It takes a true wildness to retain these things through the fire and through the storms. It takes a real wildness to remain in the wild— not contorted and maligned by circumstance and experiences. And it takes power to stand up and to choose what experiences we allow to take root or to even come into our lives.
The kindness that we receive from others in life, is also the kindness that we will want to give. The harshness that we receive from others in life, will also be the harshness that we will give. But true strength lies in seeing the harshness that we have received in life; and living in such a way so that that others will never feel the same from us.