"Like the notion of tough love, in which families and friends must help their loved ones escape destructive patterns by challenging them, tough grace is a gift from God to the soul in need of growth. Tough grace is the Divine's way of reaching certain souls who may need a measure of suffering to rise above their preoccupations, or to take others deeper into His love. Tough grace is first and foremost a form of divine communication. It operates through illness, injustice, psychological problems, and misunderstandings to bring us to a single-minded attention on what is important for our ultimate development.
”Tough grace is never about punishment. God doesn't punish us with suffering. Nor is it a means of divine coercion. The Spirit just doesn't work that way. The Divine is not wrathful, as the biblical tradition sometimes represents it. This wrathfulness is not in God, but in the human misinterpretation of God's words and actions. Suffering provides us with lessons that dispose us more readily to divine union and helps us to consider those things we often take for granted. Tough grace puts these things in front of our face. We are pushed to make decisions about our relationship with God. Tough grace brings about a radical simplification of our lives by first purifying our hidden motives with love and compassion. It highlights just what we need for the spiritual journey and counsels us to leave the rest behind. In this way, tough grace is itself a gift, though is may be the kind of gift we aren't too anxious to receive, until we witness its profound transformation effects on us. Then we understand.”
