Love in Hard Times

If there is one good thing about the crisis we have lived through in Venezuela in recent years, it is that the difficulties have made many marriages more united and more in love than ever. Some, as I will explain below, are living true “movie” romances.

Something very simple is happening in the great majority of Venezuelan homes. When a husband or wife sees the other spouse come home “bent double” with exhaustion and the pressure of the thousands upon thousands of problems they are carrying, the other spouse (however bent double and tense they may be, because things are very hard for them too) is the last to start complaining about the setbacks of their day. On the contrary, they welcome the other with a big smile, all the more so if they arrive with a package of toilet paper or Harina PAN. Gone are the days when people gave red roses, because now the best gift you can give is a package of some basic staple for the family.

In spite of the tiredness, however crushed you may feel, you invent a joke to make the other laugh. Where do we get the joke from? Usually we take the latest “crazy” news we have just read on social media or seen in the press and turn it into a joke that makes us laugh. Because nothing is truer than the saying “we laugh so as not to cry.” And we do it all to cheer up the person who shares our life, our struggle, our dreams…

Another very good thing in these hard times is that in most marriages phrases like “I feel like…”, “I want you to give me…”, “I want you to buy me…”, “I want to travel to…” disappear. They disappear, first, because we know there is no money for them; or second, because even if there were, we feel this is not a time for whims but a time to give ourselves, to serve, to help, to live… for a greater cause: the future of our nation. The outside problems weighing on our homes and on our fellow Venezuelans are so many that we forget ourselves in order to give others everything we can.

This love in hard times is a phenomenon that has struck me deeply, because I never thought I would feel it myself and also see it in so many marriages I know. Some days ago @bonysimonovis started following me on Twitter, and I began looking at her photos. I had never seen so much love in a woman and in her closest relatives (starting with her mother, who recently died “worn out” from fighting so hard for her son-in-law’s freedom), who are suffering one of the worst injustices anyone can live through. There is a photo of Bony with her husband Iván in prison that conveys a love more passionate than any Hollywood movie romance. The example this woman, and her whole family!, is giving is truly admirable. She is convinced that sooner rather than later she will win justice for her husband.

It seems that these “movie” romances in hard times are normal. Recently I saw an interview with the Cuban leader Berta Soler and two Ladies in White who were with her. They spoke wonderfully of their husbands (men who had known them since they were young girls) and of how united they were with them after more than 20 years of marriage. Their eyes shone like the Sun when they spoke of them, and they told how their husbands have become their fundamental support in daily life and in the cause they are fighting for, which they are sure they will win! I am speaking of women who have been jailed several times, who have been beaten many times and who live under constant threat, and yet you see them in good spirits and happy.

Seeing and feeling this kind of love tightens your heart and brings out the best in you. That is when you understand that incomprehensible phrase: “everything is for the good.” Listening to Berta Soler, Bony Simonovis and so many other women who are fighting for the freedom of their loved ones and of their beloved homeland, thinking of a better future for their children and grandchildren, is a hymn to truth, to justice, to freedom… It is an immense example for so many of us women who are living through hard times!

Listening to them is like a crane that lifts us up and keeps us standing so we can keep walking, keep fighting, even when we sometimes feel we are about to collapse. There is no greater truth than that you feel most alive while you are fighting. To stop fighting is to lie down and die! We are infinitely grateful for so many testimonies of tireless struggle that we are seeing in our homeland and in sister countries, which encourage us to keep praying as if everything depended on God and to keep working as if everything depended on us.

Sooner rather than later, Truth, Justice and Peace will triumph in our beloved Venezuela!