Finding Strength and Courage Through Tough Times -Part 1

No one is invincible. No one is larger than life. No one goes through life without losing something they once treasured. There are those who would have something that they though was meant to be slip away, never to return again. We will lose loved ones. Circumstances and situations will come our way and that’s when we are forced to make hard choices.

It is then we can choose to let go and let death take its’ natural course on the inside so that we become a new being, a new creature and a brand new version of ourselves or we can choose to hold on and suffer more pain and misery hoping for a breakthrough which may never come.

A SNEAK PEAK INTO MY PERSONAL TESTIMONY

Over the years I have had to deal with my own times of brutal hardships. They were things that left me torn, to the point where I though there was no return and I would have been better off dead. I lost the most trusted person in my life, my rock, my confidant and a source of strength at the passing of my mom. I have had to deal with betrayal from people who I least suspected. The loss of my innocence as a child through being molested, left me feeling worthless for years…

Marital infidelity pushed me to the brink of a failed attempted suicide. I have been shattered by a painful separation and eventual divorce after being together for nineteen years in marriage that produced three children. I stood on the banks of bankruptcy and was later thrown into the river of a shameful eviction and was left with no where to go. Poverty has plagued my family and I for most of our lives. 

I have endured some times of physical and emotional abuses that mortified my spirit man, and in the process, destroyed my self-esteem and self-worth. I have lived through the pain of losing my only son, who after carrying him in my womb for nine months, and not having the opportunity to hold him in my arms, died just five hours after my giving birth to him…

I need not say more, because by now I believe you’ve gotten a good portrait of someone who had to find strength and courage through the years of some brutal and harsh times on this journey called life.

An aside note…

Forgive me if my sharing these things have evoked emotions of a) pity for me and b) opened up some old wounds of things of things from the past that you can identify with here….

But my point of sharing was not for any of the two reasons above, rather it’s to show you that you and I could have gone through hell and back, gone through the fire and the flood, been through the deepest and darkest valley, but you know that the chain of shame of your past is BROKEN when you can talk about your past without guilt or shame.

So until next time when I bring you part 2 of how to find strength and courage through tough times, join me in meditating on this word below from Isaiah 40:31

Q’s

What is your main take away from this post? How has it helped you who are going through difficulties at this time? What other scripture comes to mind that will bring hope and encouragement to others?

photo by: Chris Ford