Quick thought

Suffering never leaves you unchanged. How it changes you depends on your response. If you resist, and try to shut yourself off from the pain, you will become harder. But if you choose willingness to submit to God's will, to allow Him to have His way in your life, knowing that He acts in love, suffering breaks yet more of the hardness of your human heart (for all of us have hardness still in our hearts), and makes you more tender, loving, and gentle. Our love for others can only be as deep as we are, and as broad as we are. If we submit ourselves to the Master's refining fire, as painful as it can be, He uses that to make us deeper and broader - a more open channel for His love to flow through to others. He proves His faithfulness more fully to us, so that we can testify of it more clearly to others. And this is a part of the joy of grief.