Turning Pain into Hope
“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”
Romans 5:3-4
Eliza hated the silence. Her life had always been so full of movement and things to do. She spent her days teaching, writing, and serving others. But now, all of that was gone.
The injury had taken it from her.
She lay in bed, her body aching, her spirit restless. The days felt unbearably long, and the quietness stretched on. At first, she fought against it. She asked the same questions over and over: Why me? What now? Where are you God?
But as the days passed, she started to read her Bible. This was not the casual kind of reading for passing the time. No. She was desperate.
And in those long, slow hours spent in the Word, she saw things she had never noticed before. Words she had once skimmed past now felt alive. Promises she had memorized now felt like they were written just for her.
She knew she was not just surviving this hardship—God was doing something in it.
One day, she found herself humming a song she had started writing before the injury. It was just another project back then. But now? The words meant something. It went like this.
“When we all get to heaven,
What a day of rejoicing that will be!
When we all see Jesus,
We’ll sing and shout the victory!”
She had never clung to heaven like this before. She had never needed to. But now, her hope in Jesus felt different. Stronger. More real.
When she finally released the song, it spread like wildfire. People who were hurting and searching found something in those words—something bigger than their pain.
Eliza Hewitt would have never chosen this hardship, but looking back, she saw it clearly. Her pain had not been wasted. God turned her silence into a song of hope, and it was too valuable to keep to herself.
That’s the thing. Sometimes, the greatest good that comes out of our hardship is what we are called to give away. Could it be that the very thing you are wrestling with is the thing that someone else needs to hear?
