As Christians, we probably all agree that we want a closer relationship with God, to have more faith and trust in Him, and to be better servants in the church. At the same time, we want to demonstrate that faith in good health for myself and my family, with Godly children, living in a comfortable home, and having enough money in the bank. Sometimes, all those things go together, and sometimes they do not.

While the majority of my life has been easy and comfortable, the past decade has not. One of our children left his plans for ministry and faithful service to God for a life completely entrenched in sin. My husband was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer all over his body with a prognosis of 3 months to live. Thankfully after 2 years of treatments, with God’s help and excellent medical care, the cancer is gone. But it would be an understatement to say it hasn’t been incredibly stressful and difficult.

While I have been a Christian most of my life, married to a minister, serving in many roles, my greatest lesson learned would be the value of suffering. It’s the “gift” no one wants, but everyone gets.

Suffering has led me to:

• Pray more because I didn’t know where to turn. I saw God working through His providence to make so many things “just work out.” I have seen it happen so often that I have learned that in any situation, I will fervently pray, do what I can about it, and then let go and see how God will work things out. What a blessing to know that I don’t have to be in control of everything. I can give it to God and He has the power to make things happen according to His will.

• Study God’s word & meditate on it more. It was during my lowest moments of fear and pain that the only place I could find the peace and comfort I needed was in His Word.

• Look for strength in my Christian family. When suffering, I found that I needed God’s people and the church more than I ever had before.

• Realize that I struggled with the sin of pride. Before the situation with our son, I had such great kids and believed things like this couldn’t happen to us. I was wrong and I needed to repent of my pride. Suffering can humble us.

• Look for ways to serve others. When my heart was hurting, I needed to stay busy, keeping my mind off myself and my own problems. As cliché as it sounds, the best way to lighten your load is to help carry someone else’s.

• Refocus on evangelism. My suffering led me to try to reach other people’s children who had left the Lord. Though I couldn’t reach my own, maybe I could help someone else’s child.

So while I would never choose to go through suffering, I have learned valuable lessons that I might not have learned in any better way.

Psalm 119:71 says that it was “good that I might be afflicted that I might learn Your statutes.”

2 Corinthians 12:10 says, “For the sake of Christ, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

We are all going to experience suffering during our lives. It may be just what we need to change our perspective and help us see more clearly what is important and what is not.

God can use our suffering to make us a tool in His providence to help other people in their trials, as well as bring us closer to Him if we let it.

There is a Japanese art form known as Kintsugi. When a piece of pottery was broken, a sap mixed with gold dust was used to form a glue to put the pieces back together. What they discovered, was that the pottery became much more beautiful and valuable after it was broken, than it had been before.

I have learned that while suffering can break us, it is by the hands of the Master craftsman that we can be put back together and become more beautiful and more useful than we were before.