None share your sorrow; few understand it. . . there are none to watch with you in the garden of your anguish—your wounded heart, like the stricken deer, bleeds and mourns in secret. But your sorrow is all known to your loving, compassionate Savior; whose wisdom appointed it, whose love sent it, whose grace sustains it, and who will soothe and strengthen you with His tenderest sympathy.

Let your labor of love, your lonely sorrow, throw you more entirely upon, and bring you into closer, more believing, and more loving relations with the Savior; wean you more from the creature; separate you more from the world; and set you more supremely apart for God. Oh! then you will thank Him for the discipline of loneliness as among the holiest and most precious blessings of your life!

~ Octavius Winslow

The heart knows its own bitterness,
And a stranger does not share its joy.
Proverbs 14:10