A Prayer

Dear Heavenly Father, give me wisdom and help me to understand the beauty of suffering. My thinking is I think exactly backwards concerning suffering. You have allowed it in my life for GOOD reasons.....GREAT reasons. I pray that you will bless the body of Christ in some way, because I have endured light and momentary trials and tribulations. Please let suffering finish its work, and let me not miss a single one of the blessings that you have intended.
Something I wrote says it all:

Masterpiece

You are marble in the hands of Michaelangelo. You are the perfect material. You have the potential to be great. You have been chosen by the Master. In your unrefined and natural state, there is nothing that would give away the secret of the greatness which lies buried deep inside your being, to the untrained eye. But to the Master, you are a labor of love, a work of art, a reality invisible, which is fixed and immovable in your original state. With His hands He will free you. He will remove every flaw, every impurity – whatever would mar the beauty of the sculpture completed.
To do so He must apply pressure and forcefully remove these imperfections. He will chisel away what is not needed. You will be hammered and broken, and it will seem to you to be pointless – even cruel – because you don't see what He sees. What is ugly will be broken off and chipped away and only then will you begin to emerge and resemble something noble.
His tools are not what you might imagine them to be. He uses pain and suffering. They are like an acid that will eat away the rock beneath them. He will unrelentingly labor over a single spot, removing what is not useful, until the outward configuration reflects what was previously concealed within.
Time has been spent. Adversity is the catalyst for change. In the hands of the Sculptor you will be made beautiful. But resistance to His methods will only prolong the process, keeping you in bondage, and under the weight of Hi hands. You are the figure I see today, because of past grief. Today's grief will disclose tomorrow's substance.