Why should I go to people if I can go to him who said, "Come unto me all who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Heavy laden — that's what I am. Laden with pride, often thinking myself better than others while we have to think the other one better than ourselves. Laden with my own egotism. Laden with all my sins. And when I went to bed last night and thought about everything and wanted to bring all those difficulties to God, I couldn't even find the words! I thought, I'm going to tell him everything just as if he were standing next to my bed and listening, for that's where he is. But I didn't even know where to start. But I also knew he knew it all already. [...] And now, when Mother called to wake me up for the New Year, I first wanted to pray, but it turned into thanks, darling, for all that God had given us this year. For his wonderful ways with us, even if we don't understand it all now. For his love, that in all our disappointments and sorrow he himself helps us to bear it all, so that all this turns into a blessing because we feel his nearness and can take up our cross joyfully. And so we may know, and we do experience, that his power is made perfect in our weakness.
Diet Eman, Things We Couldn’t Say.
Diet wrote this to her fiancé in her journal on December 31, 1944. The disappointments and sorrows for the year that she mentioned include her fiancé being arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps since April (thereby missing their planned wedding), her own arrest and imprisonment in a concentration camp for about four months, having to live under an assumed identity since she was sought by the Germans for Resistance work under her real name, isolation due to her work (including being unable to visit her family for more than a very occasional night), the arrests and deaths of a number of her friends due to Resistance work, walking all over the Netherlands with false IDs, stolen ration cards, etc. because the Germans kept stealing her bicycles, and general hunger, malnutrition, and illness.
