After seeing angry mobs threaten to kill her husband and saying nothing, after leaving behind her home and her friends and family and all of her possessions to follow her husband into the desert to live in a tent and saying nothing, after watching her husband send her children back to the city they had abandoned with the angry murderous mobs just for some book and saying nothing, and finally after waiting days and days for her sons to return and finally assuming the worst, Sariah could hold back no longer. In the bitterness of her soul after so much loss and hardship, Sariah castigated her husband, calling him a “visionary man” and saying, “Behold thou hast led us forth from the land of our inheritance, and my sons are no more, and we perish in the wilderness.” (1 Nephi 5:2). Sariah saw her husband Lehi’s visionary ways as a weakness that had lost them everything, including their sons, and would get them all killed in the end. This can not have been a pleasant experience for Lehi. He knew he was asking a lot of his family and especially his wife to follow him on something that seemed so foolish and crazy and “visionary.” But he also know that his capacity to see visions was not a weakness, but a strength. “I know that I am a visionary man; for if I had not seen the things of God in a vision I should not have known the goodness of God, but had tarried at Jerusalem, and had perished with my brethren. But behold, I have obtained a land of promise, in the which things I do rejoice; yea, and I know that the Lord will deliver my sons out of the hands of Laban, and bring them down again unto us in the wilderness.” (1 Nephi 5:4-5). In Ether 12:27, the Lord promises that if we come unto Him, He will show unto us our weakness. He does this not to point and laugh at us, but to show us that what we, and perhaps much of the rest of the world, have always assumed is a weakness is actually a strength. If we were to try to use a pair of scissors exactly as we would a knife to try to cut things, we would consider them pretty weak. But once we understand that you have to open scissors in order to use them properly, we can find that they are actually very strong at cutting things, often a lot better than a knife. This is what the Savior means when He says that He will show us our weakness. Our weaknesses will “become strong” once the Lord has shown us how to use them properly. Sariah could not see what Lehi saw and thus considered his visions a dangerous weakness. But Lehi had humbled himself before the Lord and the Lord had shown him the path he should take in order to obtain a promised land. It would seem like weakness to some to abandon his home and wander into the desert, but the Lord had shown Lehi that this apparent weakness was actually his greatest strength. I know that whatever weaknesses we think we have, if we will humble ourselves and come unto Christ, He will show us that these weaknesses are actually strengths in disguise.
