Such was the fact. And I believe I can make sense out of it. You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can’t get the best out of it. ‘Now! Let’s have a real good talk’ reduces everyone to silence. ‘I must get a good sleep tonight’ ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when we think about our dead? --A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis
I am currently going through a rough time personally, and at times of grief and pain I reflect on the above words from one of my all time favorite authors. These words seem apt to me and true. The comfort comes in knowing that all pain and grief serves a purpose, even when I am unclear as to what that might be. As with Romans 8:28 I don't expect that subsequently all will work out exactly as I would have it to be, but rather that God will not let a single ounce of my pain or grief go to waste.
