I am going to give up… I can’t stand anymore

Wallace Sousa, to blog Defiyng Limits (Desafiando Limites)

Note: this is a preliminar translation of the post “Vou Desistir! Não Aguento Mais…” (brazilian portuguese), made by Miriã Röhl. Otherwise, there is a book to sell, in portuguese, with this and others posts wich you can see here.

Perhaps you thought that this would be an encouraging word, which would gather new strength for you, although it is not like that. However you can feel motivated by reading this text, it is all about me and my life history.

Discouraged and disillusioned, I have been thru this more than once.

It is about an experience I had a few years back and I want to share with you so you know that feeling down is a much more common thing than you imagine. Everyone faces situations like this, which your strength appears to be gone and you find yourself in the bottom of the well but it is not everyone who can find the solution and keep fighting. My story is about how I got out of the well and who knows, this can be the North of your compass and help you get over your discouragement. Believe: even if you cannot see the light, victory is possible.

The story goes as follows: after a difficult time period in Natal/Rio Grande do Norte/Brazil, where I used to live around the time of past century (laughs), in a period of unemployment and delusions, I moved to a small town in Mato Grosso, on the heart of Legal Amazonia, with a population of 6.000. Every kind of changing brings expectations and hopes that things will be better.

However, my expectations were not confirmed. Going out from a state capital, with 800.000 people to a small town in the middle of the forest, rivers and cattle farms should not be different, right?

Thinking about it, that’s what happens sometimes with us: we go out of our place that brings comfort, even if the only comfort we have is being in that place, and suddenly we are thrown in a whirlwind of involuntary and traumatic changes to find ourselves speaking from the inside – It is over, now I’m in the end of the line, that’s the end.

On these moments of anguish that life takes us, where the option is just to be another person waiting for a never happening change on the winds we are able to see for how long we can keep our values, convictions and persevere on our goals.

After a waiting time I thought to be eternal, I confess that I reached the point of saying: “That’s enough! I’m tired! I’m going to quit and throw everything above me… I can’t stand it anymore!”

Then, when I was in that small wooden house where I lived, surrounded by dirt roads, sharing the small room with two brothers, I decided to open the window that faced the road and complain to God, explaining how I felt from the bottom of my heart, my frustrations that had deep roots inside me, that consumed me and burned inside me. I’ve spoken so many things that I can barely remember but the subject was appellant: I saw myself again, throwing to God promises that never came true, that never happened, that never got to fulfillment.

After minutes of silent discussion, a passive monologue, which I told everything that was in my heart that if told to a friend or a closer person would culminate in the end of the relationship, I finished my praying (praying?) with a mocking phrase: “well Jesus, I told you everything I wanted to tell and now, if You have something to tell me, you can. Your words are now on my hands (Holy Bible) and if You want to tell me something, I’m here to listen”.

That’s ridiculous, right? A grown man, near 30 years old, graduated, in the middle of nowhere, speaking to a silent sky, having as witnesses only the stars and the local fauna, holding a black covered book, pointing the sky and roaring: “Answer me God, if you have the courage!” If it was another person telling this, I would say: “you are missing a grade for hospice and already have a grade for bullshit”.

Then, as if I wanted nothing, opened the black covered book to find between the white pages, speckled with a black ink, the following words that felt as a bomb in my wasted kids cheering:

I will put on my watchtower, I will put on the fortress, and will watch to see what God will tell me and I’ll replay to my complaint. The LORD answered me and said, Write the vision, write it on tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet to be fulfilled at the time appointed, but hastens to the end and will not fail, it tarry, wait for it, because it certainly will not tarry. Habakkuk 2. 1-3

Well, after that one I was speechless… I didn’t know what more to say, honestly. The only thing I could babble was: “well, I understand what You want from me but I don’t have the strength anymore to go on ahead. Only if You renew my strength, because otherwise I’ll not be able to reach my goal”. It was late, after midnight I think and I went to sleep.

During my sleep on the year of 2001, I had a dream that went as follows:

I saw myself in a motocross racing, with a oval circuit. It was last lap and on a turn, I saw 3 people looking aggressively towards me and speaking between them: “he is going to win, we have to stop him!”. Then I noticed that 2 of them got out there and all of a sudden 2 bikers appeared on the track, coming from a road from the side of the track. Those 2 bikers came to me, one on the left and the other on the right and then they forced me to go thru a way full of obstacles, like cow ribs that are some reliefs on dirt roads, very annoying for whom travel by car or bike. Check image below:

Well, you are probably thinking how chattering was that part of the dream… the thing was so violent, because the ribs were probably of an elephant instead of a cow, that after I got out this part of the track that was near the finish line, I fell from the bike in exhaustion. I fell, completely sold out, beaten, vulnerable, without strength to blink.

Soon after that, a referee came to me (he was almost like an angel to me), and asked what I was doing down on the ground, near the finish line. Revolted I asked him: “but didn’t you see what they did to me?”. Then he answered by looking forward, to the finish line, just a few meters beyond me. From his eyes I got the following answer: “it doesn’t matter, what you have to do is finish this test; go forward, there isn’t much left to the end”. It is interesting how a gaze can cheer us up, right?

As if there was no alternative, I crawled a few meters, exhausted and with my fingertips, I touched the finish line. This is the point my memory can reach about that dram and this is the point worth to be remembered.

After I woke up by the morning, unemployed, without hopes, indebted, I realized that there was no alternative: I should go forward, without caring about what happened. Have you felt this way also, unhappy by the circumstances, by treasons of the past? Yes, I know it’s hard… and the warm tears that roll along don’t allow us to forget it easily. Go ahead, go forward, finish line is just over there.

One weird thing that got on my mind is that there was no other competitors on that race. I was racing against myself. Life is like this: it doesn’t matter what we do, we race against ourselves. If we go forward, we break our limitations. If we quit, we are lost for ourselves. In this race of living, it is me against myself and all I can do is win, because if I quit, I fall to limbo.

I got up and rode the Holy bible, morning reading. Do you know what was the reading of the day?

Why, then, do you say, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God?

There hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, or fatigue, or weary? There is no searching of his understanding.

Makes strong the weary and increases the strength of him who has no force. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength, They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. Isaiah 40.27 to 31

Don’t quit. The years I lived on that small wooden house helped to mold my character and that was crucial to make me able to achieve the position I am today, in one of the best organs of my country, on the federal district.

It is as I always say: If I can do it, anyone can do it if not quitting.

God bless you.

Soli Deo Gloria.

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ps. If you noted some wrong word, mistake or translation error, please leave your comment or send me an email: desafiandolimites@gmail.com. Thank you.

ps². If you want to read another translation, you can go to this link at Duoling. So you have to click in the banner with the USA flag (Tradução) and enjoy it. =)