They say that, after it’s over, you forget what labor pains feel like. They’re liars.

Thirty-five years after the fact, I remember every fingernail-ripping pain. I can still hear every horror movie, dying-animal noise I never knew my voice could make. I can close my eyes right now and I’m there.

I can also remember holding each squirming little miracle in my arms. With the pain still throbbing in body parts recently called upon to do the impossible, I already knew that every minute was so very, very worth it.

I look at those babies today, grown and married, holding responsible jobs, one a mother herself. I can call up the pain in a nano-second, but I still believe that it was worth it. If I had to go through it every year of their lives in order to keep them, I wouldn’t hesitate.

If someone had leaned close while I was in the grip of a contraction and whispered, “It will be worth it when you hold that baby”, I would have tied his ears in a knot and stuffed them down his throat with gusto.

When I was in labor, I couldn’t imagine having future emotions, or consider that there might be light at the end of the tunnel. I couldn’t even think about the baby itself. There was no place that the pain didn’t reach. My teeth hurt, my eyebrows hurt, my toenails hurt. The pain was so huge in my brain that even the pain itself was beyond comprehending. It just was. And it was ALL that there was, until it was over.

The first time I heard the Scripture verse from Romans, “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us”, I was a young mother with a few sufferings already under my belt at that present time. I lived in a house that a prospective buyer once mused would “cost a lot of money to make livable”. And I lived in it. Frozen cat's water dish in the winter, sweltering hot in the summer, sewage in the basement, maggots in the carpet, bats in the bedrooms, carpenter ants munching in the walls which were insulated with bat guano and old newspapers. I had two little kids, no money, and the honeymoon was over. I clung to that verse while it seemed that pain was all there was.

Over time, as in every life, more sufferings came–small, large, and super-sized. Two wild ambulance rides with each child as the patient. Diagnoses of no less than four chronic diseases, half of which are potentially debilitating. A runaway teenager. A divorce. The deaths of beloved parents and treasured friends. The hurts and disappointments and betrayals that come into all lives.

They are not worthy to be compared. I’m not sure I would have wanted to hear that from you while I was suffering these things. I may have been tempted to tie your ears in a knot, etc. But God kept reminding me, even during the pain, even when I wasn’t sure I really believed Him. Not worthy to be compared.

My mother used to talk about dropping our troubles into a hat and pulling out different ones, and how we’d wish we had our own back. She was right, of course. When I was still shaken by the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, I tried to re-focus my perspective with the pain that it was NOT: I didn’t have ALS or Alzheimer’s or an inoperable brain tumor; I hadn’t lost a spouse or a child, my home or my eyesight.

I kept repeating Romans 8:18, knowing that if I kept saying it and saying it that I would start to believe it again. And I did. And I do.

Some of my sufferings have produced blessings. Some have not...yet. Has the pain been worth it? Not yet. Not yet.

I continue reading in Romans: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth...we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly...for the redemption of our bodies.”

Groaning inwardly and waiting eagerly. The labor pains that were worth it all.

And continuing in Romans, from the Message: “That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother... Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.”

My friend Joyce and I talked one day, after we had both lost husbands–hers to sudden death, mine to divorce. We wondered aloud which was the worse pain, to love deeply and lose that person too early; or never to know that kind of love at all. We came to the conclusion that there is no measure with which to compare one's pain to another's. While the suffering goes on, it’s always a tie for first place.

And when it’s over? It’s still a tie. Your suffering, mine, the martyr in Bangladesh or Ethiopia all tie for last place. Because the sufferings of this present time aren’t worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us.

You don’t know my pain. I don’t know yours. But God knows both, and according to His Word, He is making prayer out of our aching groans. Did you get that? He is taking the groans and whimpers and tears of our present pain, and turning it into prayer.

And then? And then?

In the words of the hymn by Esther Kerr Rusthoi:

It will be worth it all when we see Jesus,
Life’s trials will seem so small when we see Christ;
One glimpse of His dear face all sorrow will erase,
So bravely run the race till we see Christ.

Is it worth it? No. But it will be.