Not many women were as happy as Lucia, or so she believed.

        She was married to the man she had fallen for when she was still a teenager, and a son was given to them to crown their happiness.

        What else could she want?

        In the mornings, she woke up singing happy songs. She took care of the house and looked after her son, and at the end of the day, she waited for her husband, full of joy.

        Everything was fine, until she found out that the man she loved so much was unfaithful to her. It had been happening for a good while.

        She felt hurt, talked to her husband, and told him she expected more respect from him.

        The answer was brutal, violent. The sweet man she knew suddenly became aggressive and raging.

        That was the day she realized her marriage had come to an end.

        She would not live with somebody that could be physically aggressive.

        The next the morning, after a night of anguish, she woke up very sad, and made a serious decision.

        She would kill herself. She would end her own life. She wanted revenge.

        She took her son by the hand and decided she would kill him first. She wanted her husband to have a guilty conscience.

        Her destination was the Barra Lighthouse in Salvador, Bahia, where she lived. She knew about a cliff where the sea hit the rocks violently.

        The street they walked was very busy. While they were waiting to cross it, the child escaped and ran amongst the cars. She became desperate.

        A strange paradox. She was taking the child to be thrown into the sea but when he actually put himself in danger, she forgot about herself and ran after him, getting him by the hand nervously.

        At this point, the child bent down, unconscious of all that was going on around him, and picked up a piece of paper from the floor.

        Lucia took it from him and the title, in big letters, caught her attention: Just one minute

        And then she read: In only one minute, the torment calms down, the pain vanishes, the absentee arrives. Money changes hands, love goes away, life changes.

        She walked down the road, pulling the boy by the hand and reading the page. It was a psychographic page dictated by a Spirit.

        She finished reading. The impetus was gone. In just one minute. She stopped, looked around and realized she had arrived. The cliff was not far. She sat down and cried.

        The impulse to die was gone. She read the message again. She thought about a man that was a spiritist, who worked at the same Bank where her husband worked.

        She went home and remembered that evening when they had dinner at this man’s house and he mentioned something about Spiritism. A remark that her and her husband, who followed a different religion, rejected immediately.

        She decided to call the man, asking him for advice. He suggested she should join a Spiritist Centre.

        Being attended by a dedicated fellow who listened to her afflicted soul, she started searching through the sincere prayer, the noble reading, the comforting laying on of hands, for the necessary strength for that moment of crisis.

        Her husband, realizing that something had changed, followed her one night. Even with distrust, he joined her in the Spiritist Centre, and he also found there a source of comfort and clarification.

        Today, both work in a Spiritist Centre. They have rebuilt their lives. The years went by, the boy is now a teenager and they have two more sons.

* * *

        Change of direction. Life changes, in just one minute.In one minute, God sends us help.

        It can be a friendly heart, a helpful hand or a piece of printed-paper, lying on the floor. Paper that the wind hasn’t taken far.

        Only one minute and love is back, hope is born again.Only one minute, and the sun comes through the clouds, clearing everything.

        Do not torment yourself and wait. Only one minute. Help will come. The scene changes. Life is reborn.

        Have patience. Do not give yourself up to despair. Wait. While you suffer, God provides assistance.

        Wait. One minute only. Sixty seconds. A lifetime.

        One minute more…

* * *

        In just a minute, the Divine Mercy flows, full of blessings, through the dark alleys of human steps. It corrects them, improves them, repairs them, transforming them in luminescent roads leading to a bigger life.

Spiritist Moment Team, based on the chapter 24, from the book O semeador de estrelas,  by Suely Caldas Schubert, publishing house Leal.
May 02 2008.