It’s easy to speak theoretically about finding joy, peace, beauty or meaning in suffering. But when someone has suffered, has lived through what anyone would rightly call a nightmare, and who nonetheless speaks about what she gained, it’s worth listening.

Ten years ago, Tracy Grant’s husband died of terminal cancer. And for the seven months from his diagnosis to his death, she was the person who cared for him.

It couldn’t have been easy. They had two young sons. As her husband’s brain cancer advanced, he needed her help just to go to the bathroom.

Looking back on those seven months ten years later, Grant describes it as the time she discovered the reason she was put on this earth. Among other things, she came to realize that nothing else she did in life would ever matter more. She writes about it in The Washington Post in a deeply moving piece titled “I was my husband’s caregiver as he was dying of cancer. It was the best seven months of my life.” Grant is a deputy managing editor for the newspaper.

Some days were, of course, difficult. But she says there were no bad days. “I discovered that the petty day-in, day-out grievances of an irksome co-worker, a child with the sniffles or a flat tire pale in comparison to the beauty of spontaneous laughter, the night sky, the smells of a bakery,” she writes. She found that if she was willing to look hard enough, she could fine moments of joy and beauty in every day. “With each day, my heart and soul grew more open to seeing this beauty than at any other time in my life.” Looking back on it, she writes that without realizing it she had trained herself in the art of being grateful.

During nights when sleep didn’t come, she started praying the Rosary. Soon she was praying it daily even when sleep wasn’t a problem. She came to miss her rosary beads if they weren’t within reach while her husband underwent scans and they waited for test results.

And I especially love this part: “Even during the moments when I was most angry with God I found that I could talk to Mary on the theory that she knew a little bit about being challenged by God.”

Tens years later, not surprisingly, Grant is a changed person. She says the Rosary every morning. She tries to be like the person she was during those seven months by being less judgmental, more patient and forgiving, and more grateful for what she calls the small moments in life.

The people at PBS News Hour were so moved by her piece that they asked to tell her story in a video essay. (You can watch it below.)

No one would wish for the suffering Tracy Grant experienced. But we can hope and pray for the grace to find in all of our sufferings, great and small, the depth of meaning she did.