“I want both of you to realize how well I understand the sufferings attendant upon mental illness. Though not so severe as yours, mine was bad enough. It was an acute depression of two years’ duration with no surcease. Following that, three more years of bedevilment lightened somewhat by gradual improvement. So I can perfectly comprehend what it means to feel cut off from God, from one’s fellows and even from one’s self – save, of course, the remaining capacity to feel emotional pain and anguish such as no ordinary drunkard ever knew. 

You must have often asked yourself the very question so frequently in my own mind – why all this pain; what have I done to merit this suffering? The answer I get is that pain, quite as much as pleasure, is in God’s providence. In the long run everything evolves for the better, not because of pleasure but because of pain. Discomfort stimulates us to learn how to avoid it, to accept it if we must, and in any case profit from the lessons of that experience. When you stop to think about it, Alcoholics Anonymous is nothing but capitalized grief. For us of A.A. pain is the touchstone of all progress.

Now I confess I have not nearly enough saintliness to enjoy suffering when it comes. But when I do have it can always realize that something very useful, something perhaps very beautiful, even ecstatic can be made of it later on. One can learn its lessons and pass them on to the others, so bringing unfoldment and so drawing us nearer to the God who Grace is the ultimate answer when we have suffered enough to cast ourselves completely upon him.