When My Own Strength Wasn’t Enough- My Testimony
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” — Proverbs 3:5
I cannot remember a time in my life when I did not believe in God. He was always there somehow, quietly in the background of my childhood. I prayed as a child, especially at night or whenever I was scared or didn't feel well. I knew I could talk to God, and I knew how to pray. But looking back, I can see that knowing about God and truly knowing Him were two very different things. I believed He existed, but I did not yet have a real relationship with Jesus.
As I grew older, faith became more of a routine. I was active in church, I served, I played guitar, and I did many of the things that looked like faith from the outside. But inside, God felt distant. Part of that came from the way I had learned to see Him. I had heard things that made me feel like God was someone I needed to please and someone who might punish me if I did something wrong. Instead of seeing Him as someone I could run to, I was afraid of disappointing Him. During my teenage years, I slowly drifted further away and entered relationships and situations that were not healthy for me.
At the same time, I was always searching for answers. Psychology fascinated me from a very young age because I wanted to understand why people hurt, why we behave the way we do, and what can help us heal. I started reading psychology and self-help books and later explored meditation, Buddhism, positive thinking, and different spiritual approaches. I learned a lot about changing my thoughts, working on myself, and trying to create inner peace.
And honestly, some of those things helped. As long as life was relatively stable, I felt like I had found ways to manage myself and my circumstances. But when life became truly difficult, I realized how limited my own strength was.
I went through a painful relationship that involved betrayal and emotional hurt, and at only nineteen, I experienced burnout. Later, while working as a nurse in Germany, I experienced burnout again. I had knowledge. I had tools. Many times, I even knew exactly what I was supposed to do. But I didn't have the strength to actually do it. That became one of the most important realizations of my life: knowing what to do is not the same as having something strong enough to hold you when you cannot do it anymore.
Then I met my husband, and through him, I experienced love, safety, and trust in a new way. But life didn't suddenly become easy. When the war in Ukraine started, he had to go to Poland near the Ukrainian border, and for weeks, I had no contact with him. I didn't know if he was okay. There was nothing I could do to control the situation. Looking back now, I can see how that season was already teaching me something that would become incredibly important later:
there are things in life that are simply outside of my control.
Then I became pregnant, and at his birth, we found out that our son David has Down syndrome and a serious heart condition. As a nurse, I understood what that meant. I knew the risks, the possible complications, and what could happen. Suddenly, all the knowledge that had made me feel secure before felt incredibly small. I couldn't control what was happening to my baby, and I couldn't guarantee that everything would be okay.
That was when my prayer life began to change.
I no longer prayed because I thought I should. I prayed because I needed to. I prayed through fear, uncertainty, and moments when I didn't know what else to do.
Slowly, prayer stopped being a religious routine and became something real.
When David was seven months old, he underwent high-risk open-heart surgery. Afterward, things became even more complicated. He developed infections, had COVID, experienced seizures and kidney problems, needed dialysis, had allergic reactions to antibiotics, and struggled with respiratory problems that brought him back to intensive care again and again. We spent an entire month in the hospital. There were times when I was completely alone with him, isolated, barely sleeping, exhausted, and carrying a level of fear that is difficult to describe.
And then there was one moment that I will never forget.
I walked into the hospital bathroom, closed the door, fell onto my knees, put my head against the floor, and cried out to God. I told Him, “I cannot do this anymore. I need You. I need a miracle.”
There was nothing left for me to control. There was no strength left, no strategy, no pretending that I could somehow hold everything together. There was only surrender.
Things didn't immediately become better. David had seizures and another serious infection and had to return to the ICU. I knew how serious his condition was, and I knew there was a possibility that he might not recover. The Doctors told us, that there might be a risk for him to have brain damage after the seizures he experienced. But then, after weeks of barely sleeping, I experienced a few hours of incredibly deep and peaceful sleep, while David was in the ICU with the critical condition. I cannot fully explain the peace I had in that moment.
And when I woke up, I was told that David was getting better and that he was coming back from intensive care... 4 hours after I had been told that we don't know the outcome... 4 hours after I saw with my nurse's eyes the monitor, the blood work, and his seizures.
From that moment on, things began to turn. There were improvements that we could not fully explain medically. People had been praying for him, and deep inside, I knew that this wasn't something I had done or just the Doctors alone. It was grace.
That season completely changed my relationship with God. My faith was no longer primarily connected to fear or religious routine. I had reached a place where all the things I normally relied on like my knowledge, my strength, my plans, my understanding, were no longer enough. And there, I learned what it meant to surrender.
The verse “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” became deeply personal to me. I had spent so much of my life leaning on my own understanding. I wanted to understand psychology, people, circumstances, and myself. I wanted strategies and solutions. I wanted to know what I could do to make things better. But there in the hospital, I couldn't understand everything and I couldn't fix everything.
I had to trust even when I didn't know what would happen next.
Today, I still deeply value everything I have learned about psychology. I believe emotional tools, understanding our thoughts and behaviors, healthy communication, boundaries, and learning how to process our experiences can be incredibly valuable. I use many of these things in my own life and in my work. But my own story has taught me that they are not enough on their own.
Because what happens when you know the strategy, but you're too exhausted to use it?
What happens when there isn't an answer?
What happens when something is completely outside of your control?
For me, that is where Jesus changed everything.
I needed someone who could hold me when I couldn't hold myself anymore. And today, when fear comes, I know where to go. When anxiety rises, I pray. I worship. There have been moments when we were driving to the hospital again and I could feel fear rising inside of me, and instead of allowing panic to take over, I turned on worship music and sang through the fear.
Not because everything was okay. Not because I knew what was going to happen. But because I knew I wasn't alone.
My testimony isn't that I found Jesus and suddenly everything became easy. I still experience fear. I still have moments when I want to control things. I am still learning, growing, and discovering areas of my life that I need to surrender to Him.
The difference is that now I know where to go.
I have seen God move again and again, not because I have done everything right or because my faith has always been strong, but because I have learned what it means to come to Him and say, “God, I need You.”
My journey isn't finished. There are still so many chapters being written. But today, I don't just believe that God exists.
I know where my help comes from. I know who I can run to when my own strength is gone. And I know that even when I don't understand what He is doing, I can trust Him.
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