Suffering Is Never for Nothing

by Elisabeth Elliot

I once received a wonderful letter from a woman, an older woman who told me back when she was a little girl in the Depression that her father had died. None of his friends came to the funeral. She had to wear a borrowed dress. The house was mortgaged. Her mother was left a widow with seven children. And the lawyer who was supposed to be handling her financial affairs stole the inheritance. And the lady said this, when we went back to the house after the funeral, my mother picked up a broom and began to sweep the kitchen. And she said I look back on that now and I realize that it was the soft swish, swish, swish of that broom that began the healing process. She said my mother was a destitute woman. And when people asked her years later how she made it, she just said, “I prayed.” Well she didn’t just pray. She prayed and she did the next thing. She picked up the broom.