Encouraging - Pain & Pleasure

What is true in the body is also true in the soul. The pain of loss is severe because the pleasure of life is so great; it demonstrates the supreme value of what is lost. The screaming pain I feel at the loss of my mother, my wife, and my daughter reflects the pure pleasure I felt in knowing them. I cannot have one without the other, for both show what the soul is capable of feeling, sometimes simultaneously.

Jerry Sittser, A Grace Disguised (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI: 2004), 55.