The Quiet Well - Blogs



Do Not Let Your Hands Be Weak

I want to push back on a feeling, a perspective and sometimes, a position.

There is no intention to dismiss it. Just examine it a little more carefully than we sometimes take the time to do. It is the sense of feeling out of place.

I have experienced being and feeling out of place. Visibly, uncomfortably, undeniably out of place. I started my career as a process engineer in a male-dominated environment. Even before that, studying to be an engineer was almost entirely male. There was a 9:1 ratio in almost every aspect – students, tutors, professors. It didn't matter that it was another Tuesday, it was just another ordinary day of not fitting neatly into the room I was sitting or in some cases standing in. 

And it wasn't only that I was often the only woman. I was frequently the only Black woman. That particular combination of visible difference has a weight to it that is difficult to describe to someone who has never carried it.

And yet.

In most of those rooms, while I may have looked out of place, I certainly did not feel out of place. With a quietness that surprised even me, I felt that I belonged there. That my thoughts were valid. That my perspective was being sought and was adding something real. That I had brought something to that table that the table needed. I added value.

Visually, I was out of place. But I did not feel it.

That distinction matters more than I knew how to articulate at the time. Because being out of place is simply a fact of the room: who is in it, who has always been in it, who the room was not originally designed for. But feeling out of place is something entirely different. It is an internal posture, a feeling that we choose to identify with, it is a perspective and an acceptance of a position. 

And it is not always telling the truth.

The moments I have genuinely felt out of place — in corporate settings, occasionally in church — have almost never been about the room itself. They have been about whether I felt I should be there in the first place. Whether I had enough to offer. Whether I was allowed to contribute, or whether my contribution would land and be taken seriously. Confidence. Knowledge. Psychological safety. Visibility.

It is almost always an inside job.

The room rarely tells you that you don't belong. You tell yourself.

2 Chronicles 15 verse 7 is the scripture I return to in those moments.

"Be strong and do not let your hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded."

Do not let your hands be weak.

In Yoruba, there is an adage for the moment when news, information, situation is shocking, surprising and therefore becomes too much — they would say “my hand fell off” [apa mi jabo]. It is a literal translation, that makes causes this verse to speak deeply to me.

The overwhelming weight of a thing, that makes your hand give way. I know that feeling. When the room feels closed. When the work feels unseen and relentless. When the effort of continuing feels greater than the evidence that it matters.

That is when the verse finds me. Be strong. Not physically, that has never been the kind of strength this requires. Mentally. In your focus. In your grip on the bigger picture. In your knowledge of who you are.

And do not let your hand be weak.

The hand that feels like it is falling is also the hand that God holds, it is the hand He steadies, the hand that carries your work into rooms that were not built for you — that hand is not weak. It is held. And the work it carries, even when it goes unnoticed by the person directly in front of you, is not unnoticed.

Our work is unto the Lord. And He sees it all.

You are not out of place. You are exactly where you are meant to be. And your work, the work your hands are doing faithfully, sometimes quietly, in rooms that do not always know what to do with you — shall be rewarded. 

Be strong.