Prayer is good...

Suffering is better. - Mother Mary Electa of Christ, OCD
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I read that quote early on in my conversion and sometimes - not always - I think of it during those times when I find it difficult to pray, or recollect myself - even at Mass when I fall prey to so many distractions and petty annoyances.  Little Therese of Lisieux understood that as well, while in choir during mental prayer the rattling of an old nun's dentures disturbed the saint's peace.  Therese offered the annoyance as a little sacrifice of praise.  One sees in this how 'suffering' becomes a prayer, and therefore a good. 
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I'm very interested in modern saints, the closer to our age they lived, the better, since they show us how to live the Gospel amidst great difficulties and opposition.  I was attracted to the blind St. Matrona for that very reason.  She lived through the revolution and under the atheistic regime of the Soviet Union until her death in 1954.  She remained faithful, even though some of the priests and hierarchy may have been agents of the Communist government - or at least cooperators.  Her story is amazing.
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Likewise, the life of Fr. Walter Ciszek is amazing, a fine example of the spirituality of complete abandonment to Divine Providence.  His experience in Soviet prisons and camps is a wonderful example of living one's faith amidst suffering, tribulation, persecution and uncertainty. 
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Humility and the will of God.
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I've made such a long introduction here just to share a couple of passages from Ciszek's story I found edifying.  Maybe you will too. 
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"This tendency to set acceptable conditions on God, to seek unconsciously to make his will for us coincide with our desires, is a very human trait.  And the more important the situation is, the more totally committed to it or the more completely our future depends upon it, then the easier it becomes for us to blind ourselves into thinking that what we want is surely what God must want.  We can see one solution only and naturally we assume that God will help us reach it.
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It is an awful thing this dross of self that spoils even the best things we do out of the supposedly highest motives.  'Like gold refined in the furnace he tried them,' says the Book of Wisdom about the souls of the just.  Somehow, by the trials and tribulations of this life, our souls must be purified of this dross of self if we are to become ultimately acceptable to God.  For each of us the trials will come in different ways and at different times... -but we are created to do God's will and not our own, to make our wills conform to his and not vice versa...  In large tests and in small therefore, God must sometimes allow us to act on our own so we can learn humility, so we can learn the truth of our total dependence upon him, so we can learn all of our actions are sustained by his grace, and that without him we can do nothing - not even make our own mistakes.
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And the greatest grace God can give such a man is to send him a trial he cannot bear with his own powers - and then sustain him with his grace so he may endure to the end and be saved." - He Leadeth Me, The Interrogations.  
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Art:  St. Symeon Stylite