New Strength

Many years ago, I faced one of the most difficult situations of my life. I will not share the details, but I will say that I was in a place against my will, and that the circumstances of my life and the lives of many others who suffered alongside me were terrible.

We were constantly subjected to humiliation and threatened that we would never get out of there. At twenty-two, enduring those conditions day after day was very difficult for me. At first I kept my spirits up, encouraged by the hope that it would all soon end, but little by little I fell into a depression that drained my strength and tested my faith.

One night, after an exhausting day of work and after witnessing a terrible injustice without daring to do anything to prevent it, I felt so miserable that I thought I had reached the limit of my strength. When I finally lay down in the hammock that served as my bed, I pulled the covers over my head and prayed the most desperate prayer of my life: “Lord, I don’t want to wake up tomorrow. I don’t want to live anymore; I don’t have the strength to go on here.”

I can assure anyone reading these lines that it was a sincere prayer. With all my heart, I asked God to let me die. The next day, as you can well imagine, I woke up in the same place and in the same condition. Once again I faced situations like those that had left me exhausted the day before, but I discovered that although I had believed I had no strength, I did have some.

Then I remembered a famous passage from the book of Isaiah: “…have you not heard that the everlasting God is the LORD, who created the ends of the earth? …He gives strength to the weary and increases the strength of those who have none. …those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles…”

Today I laugh at the inexperienced, cowardly young man who thought adverse circumstances had destroyed him. In fact, at that moment I had no idea that after that prayer God would give me the strength not only to live through that day but to spend two more years in the same situation! Nor did I know about all the blessings and happy experiences that would come into my life in a future I could not then imagine.

Today, many years after that experience, I realize how generous God was in not answering my prayer and in giving me strength and hope to go on living. How many blessings I would have missed if he had granted my request that horrible night! If anyone reading these lines is weary and downcast, suffering something they believe they cannot endure, let them cry out to God with all the strength of their soul.

Perhaps God will not grant you exactly what your heart desires right now, but I assure you that he has resources you cannot imagine to help you and boundless blessings to pour out on you… later. He did it for me!

God bless you all!