A Grief Observed

My good friend Lori has a wonderful way with words and she KNOWS her books! Here is a link to her post, but I copied a bit of it here.
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A Grief Observed

C.S. Lewis's true love came to him late in life in the person of Joy Gresham and though they had only been married for 4 years when she lost her battle with cancer, he was deeply and permanently affected. Only the hardest of hearts could not be moved by the thoughts and emotions he conveys in this brief journal. Though it's brevity makes for a quick and easy read, it is nevertheless a profound and soul-stirring account of one man's journey of faith through a dark valley.

*Brandy here...this is where the quote from the book begins.

Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead. From the rational point of view, what new factor had H.'s death introduced into the problem of the universe? What grounds has it given me for doubting all that I believe? I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily. I would have said that I had taken them into account. I had been warned - I had warned myself - not to reckon on worldly happiness. We were even promised sufferings. They were a part of the program. We were even told, "Blessed are they that mourn," and I accepted it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination. Yes; but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this? No. And it wouldn't for a man whose faith and whose concern for other people's sorrows had been real concern. The case is too plain. If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which "took these things into account" was not faith but imagination. The taking them into account was not real sympathy. If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came. It has been an imaginary faith playing with innocuous concerns labelled "Illness," "Pain," "Death," and "Loneliness." I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. Now it matters, and I find I didn't.
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*Brandy again. This made me think of another article I read recently (I can't remember where) about doing battle with our tears. The writer said that too often we cry for ourselves, but God gave us tears to cry for others. We are to feel others pain and cry out to God to hear and answer. Abortion. Murder. Rape. Persecution. The scriptures talk about "crying out to the Lord" and Him hearing and answering. May we truly feel and enter into the pain of others. Then when our own troubles come we will be more prepared, having truly carried the burdens of others who have gone before us.