Affliction. It isn’t our favorite thing to talk about. I don’t think any of us greet affliction as a friend and long for the next time of difficulty to come our way. But God’s Word teaches us that affliction is good for us. In times of hardship, there are great lessons to be learned.

My husband and I walked through six years of infertility and childlessness. To be honest, I did not handle most of those years well. The years of fertility treatments, of the dreaded one pink line, of hoping and grieving each month, and of walking away from everything with empty arms rocked me to my core. It propelled me into a crisis of faith. During months of dark depression, I grappled with what I believed about God. I fought with God about his goodness. I yelled at him about what I believed he should do and who I believed he should be.

Those years of darkness, though they were not pleasant, yielded abundant fruit. I walked away from those years changed for good. Because God met me in my darkness. God reached down from on high, he took hold of me, and he drew me out of many waters (Psalm 18:16). In the midst of a dark valley, the Lord walked beside me. He drew near to me. He humbled me and taught me that his goodness does not depend on my circumstances. He taught me that his plans for me are always for my good and for his glory even when I don’t see it. He brought me through the other side of infertility with a stronger belief in his goodness and an renewed confidence in his faithfulness. I can say with the Psalmist, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statues” (Psalm 119:71).

But those years of affliction were also preparing me for something else. They were preparing me to welcome home a daughter who had been severely afflicted. I thought I had learned that God is faithful in suffering. But he was about to test me in a new way. In welcoming my daughter home, God asked me if I believed that he was faithful in the suffering of someone I dearly love. I will never, ever forget the moment when I sat at a table in a DSS office and read her file. Affliction after affliction after affliction was recorded there. As I read, my heart began pounding. My chest tightened. My throat constricted. The tears poured. And I remember thinking to myself, “Lord, I believe that you afflicted me in faithfulness. But why did you have to afflict her in this way?”

Over the past two and a half years, I have had to learn to accept that God is faithful even in my daughter’s suffering. Accepting my own season of hardship laid the foundation to trust the Lord with my daughter’s. I battled anger that he could let these things happen to her. I battled anger that he did not sovereignly intervene to stop it. Once again, I found myself doubting his goodness that something like this could happen to someone so innocent.

Yet the Lord was faithful to meet me. Seeing my daughter’s affliction has grown in me a fresh loathing of sin. Watching my daughter’s affliction causes me to groan along with all of creation under the horrible weight of sin and long for the day when all evil things will come untrue and this world will be wholly remade. Seeing her affliction makes me long for the New Jerusalem when perfect peace will reign and we will worship in the presence of the Lamb himself.

The truth that I learned through my own suffering—I have to cling to that same truth for her. I have to cling to the truth that God uses all things for our good and for his glory. Her suffering, her affliction, the difficulties that he has sovereignly placed in her life can be used mightily for her good and to advance his kingdom. I must choose to cling to the truth that he afflicts us in faithfulness. There is a plan for her affliction. There is a reason that he allowed her to struggle. Even when I cannot see his face in it, I can surely trust his heart.

I think often of 2 Corinthians 1:3-7:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.”

Christ doesn’t just call us to affliction. He also calls us to comfort. When he faithfully afflicts us, we are able to enter into the afflictions of others and offer the comfort that we have received through Christ in our own afflictions. God doesn’t call you to suffer alone. He walks with you in the flames. He pours out grace and comfort. He sustains you by the Word of his power. So take heart in your afflictions. Take heart when you watch the afflictions of others. He is working in the midst of it all.

My own afflictions have paved the way for me to speak comfort and truth into the lives of others. It is my hope and prayer that the same will be true of my daughter. I already see ways that the Lord is using her past experiences to shape her, to mold her, and to create within her a compassionate heart for the needs of others. Just as God is faithful in my afflictions, he is faithful in hers. He will use these things for her good and for his glory.