all shall be well

There is a place where the human fails, breaks down, turns to ashes. Hope has not a single foothold. In such an hour there is a perishing of everything unless the soul waits in silence for God only." - Amy Camichael
A few summers ago I read Amy Carmichael's biography by Elizabeth Elliot and retained this image in my mind of a strong Irish woman in the mist of Hindu temples saving children from prostitution (ie Devadasi). I remember reading this quote after so much had seem to go wrong and feeling overwhelmed with the ability to relate with those few times in my life where I have felt helpless and frozen in emotion.
Living overseas in a different culture has a way of stripping all securities away. When friends, families, and communities are thousands of miles from your new home, God has a way of making you come to terms with yourself in a very deep and profound way. Recently, I have realized that this intense vulnerability, which can be so painful, is one of God's mercies.
It is in trials of intense vulnerability that we must make a choice to indulge in our emotions, being overwhelmed by either anxiety or depressing, or harden ourselves to feeling at all. But if we have faith that God is working through these trials, that they are not just a series of misfortune events, but God's way of developing meaning and character in our lives.
Though the world is overwhelmed with despair, suffering, and darkness, our hope is in Christ and He is our victory. But we must always make the choice whether to give into our own self-pity, doubt, and pain, or have faith that, as Julian of Norwich famously wrote, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Or, as Thomas Merton ends his autobiography:

It was true. I was hidden in the secrecy of His protection. He was surrounding me constantly with the work of His love, His wisdom, and His mercy. And so it would be, day after day, year after year. Sometimes I would be preoccupied with problems that seemed to be difficult and seemed to be great, and yet when it was all over the answers that I worked out did not seem to matter much anyway, because all the while, beyond my range of vision and comprehension, God had silently and imperceptibly worked the whole thing out for me, and had presented me with the solution. To say it better, He had worked the solution into the very tissue of my own life and substance and existence by the wise incomprehensible weaving of His Providence.