When God allows sorrow and affliction to come into our lives, God always has a timetable different from ours. God asks us to bear our cross for a certain period of time and nothing we try to do seems to lift that cross from our shoulders entirely until we are transformed and God is ready to elevate us to a new level of love. What I am mainly talking about here are those little neuroses and disabilities and anxieties that come into our lives and which we try desperately to understand and rid ourselves of, sometimes for years on end. And then one day they are no longer there and we find ourselves ready to meet life, more humble and trusting in the goodness and providence of God.