Physical illness, whatever it is, emotional distress, financial disaster, death, being forsaken and left alone, whatever shatters your confidence in your own abilities, your own strength becomes your extremity and that is God's opportunity. A progressive weakening of your instinctive self-confidence that leads you all the way to self-despair is exactly where God wants you because at that point the only thing that's going to hold you together is a radical confidence in God.