I was at the bookstore a couple of days ago. When I walked out, I had a Nooma video, a book about relating, and a book called My Utmost for His Highest. Published in 1915, it apparently has been used by gazillions of Christians everywhere and everyone swears by it. There is something about books from the Greatest Generation that strikes me with reverence and awe. Check out this quote from the book, from the entry titled On Receiving One’s Self in the Fires of Sorrow:
We say that there ought to be no sorrow, but there is sorrow, and we have to receive ourselves in its fires. If we try and evade sorrow, refuse to lay our account with it, we are foolish. Sorrow is one of the biggest facts in life; it is no use saying sorrow ought not to be. Sin and sorrow and suffering are, and it is not for us to say that God has made a mistake in allowing them.
Sorrow burns up a great amount of shallowness, but it does not always make a man better. Suffering either gives me my self or it destroys my self. You cannot receive your self in success, you lose your head; you cannot receive your self in monotony, you grouse. The way to find your self is in the fires of sorrow. Why it should be so is another matter, but that it is so is true in the Scriptures and in human experience. You always know the man who has been through the fires of sorrow and received himself, you are certain you can go to him in trouble and find that he has ample leisure for you. If a man has not been through the fires of sorrow, he is apt to be contemptuous, he has no time for you you. If you receive yourself in the fires of sorrow, God will make you nourishment for other people.