When You Don’t Have The Strength

The passage above is one of the most moving in English literature. And no wonder—many of us can identify with how the man felt as he froze to death, especially when we remember times we thought we were all alone in a seemingly meaningless and cold-hearted world.

Life can be so hard that we feel like giving up. Our faith in goodness and belief in a higher power is tested, and we begin to ‘see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.’ ‘I’m not up to it’ or ‘I want to give up ‘are thoughts that can run through our minds. But when we are at our weakest, we often discover the gift of strength that is always within us. Feeling there’s nowhere else to turn to, we dig deep into our souls and drag up hidden resources of hope and faith. We awake to the realisation that there is a God who is not beyond the stars but within us. We rediscover that he does care and can give us supernatural strength and hope no matter what we’re going through. 

If all this sounds fanciful and theoretical, my response is that I saw for myself how my late wife, Cushla, flourished even in the face of great adversity by continuously drawing on divine strength:

As well as enduring a strange, inexplicable and debilitating illness for seventeen years, she lost our only child, Meera Thérèse, through miscarriage and her best pal and youngest sister, Tricia, at age 38. Then, five years later, Cushla was diagnosed with cancer and died at age 51.

Despite all the crosses in her life,  not long before she died, Cushla said to me: ‘I’ve led a charmed life’. I knew she meant it and wasn’t just saying this to comfort me. I’d known her for twenty-seven years and can categorically say she was the happiest, most resilient and calmest person I ever met. These qualities were, in no small measure, due to her belief that death wasn’t the end and that there was a divine purpose for her suffering.  

Drawing on divine strength in the face of bad news

— A Short Story

The supernatural strength Cushla drew on enabled her to live a remarkable life and gave her the inner ability to see beyond her own crosses. Instead of indulging in self-pity, it inspired fearlessness and selflessness in her. I remember one incident in particular that  illustrates what I’m trying to convey:

Cushla and I were driving home from town when her phone rang. I felt a sense of dread creeping up my body because I had a good idea who was at the other end of the phone. I pulled over and parked on the side of the road. My instinct proved correct: it was a senior hospital administrator at the other end.

Cushla had been diagnosed with breast cancer over nine months earlier. After a seemingly successful procedure and a course of chemotherapy and radiation, she got the all-clear. There was no trace of cancer. But she hadn’t been feeling well of late and had recently returned to the hospital for tests.

Now that our car was parked away from the busy traffic,  I could overhear the gist of the call. The female administrator told Cushla that the oncology team ‘had found something’ and that the chief oncologist would contact her soon. I was devastated. We had been praying together, but I didn’t want to pick up where we had left off—I felt I didn’t have the strength.

‘Now is the time to pray,’ Cushla said. She meant it more for me than for her. I protested, but she continued to encourage me to carry on praying. Despite the bad news, she was thinking only of me as she attempted to sustain me in my anguish. Before I joined her again in prayers, to my amazement and eternal admiration, she gently reminded me that we should drive off because she needed to pick up her brother, Peter, from his mental health workshop at the usual time of 3:00 pm. Again, she was putting someone else’s welfare before her own.

When we got home, Cushla sprang into action, collecting what she needed before heading to the car to collect her brother. After she brought him home, she planned to spend the rest of the afternoon looking after him and their mother. Incredibly, her attitude was light-hearted, and she even tried to pep me up, smiling and joking, before she closed the front door behind her and headed off to pick up her brother.

Cushla hadn’t arrived at that astonishing level of equanimity or resilience overnight. For years, she had lived by her conviction: ‘If you have a hundred per cent faith, you will have zero per cent fear’. I’m convinced this kind of faith, combined with her spiritual discipline, was the key that gave her the grace of divine peace and the supernatural strength she needed.

I especially remember a particularly poignant moment when, one morning, I witnessed her struggling to get ready for work. She was at one of her lowest ebbs due to her mysterious debilitating illness. ‘How do you keep going?’ I asked her.  

‘Where do you think?’ she replied, pointing upwards. I understood immediately. Although she possessed an indomitable spirit, even I could see that she wasn’t relying just on her resources⸻ she was drawing on God’s supernatural power.

Faith in God doesn’t prevent bad things from happening or preclude us from sadness, but it was plain to see that Cushla’s spiritual discipline had built formidable forbearance and resilience. I tried to learn from her example and stepped up my prayer life. If I hadn’t done so,  I wouldn’t have been able to cope nearly as well as I did, especially after she died.

My happy memories of the love, the life we shared, and the incredible spiritual legacy she left me continue to help me stay strong. And now that she is in the spirit realm, unrestricted by an earthly body in time and space, I’m sure her influence for good lifts up many more souls, maybe even you!