suffering while spiritually pregnant

People wonder where God is in their pain.  One of my favorite books addresses that question really well but for now just one quote from The Shack.  "Your pain was blinding your vision of Me." Mary was about 14 and unmarried, a horror in those days to an innocent girl and her parents.  Her fiance threatens to leave her but changes his mind in the end.  They have to travel on a donkey to Bethlehem while she is 9 months pregnant and she leaves her mom and everyone she knows behind.  Could she be thinking: 

Where are you God?

Why aren't you helping me? 

Is this the way you want it to be?

This is how the Savior is to be born?

Is this the way you want your Son's life to begin?

After travelling like that her labor begins and Joseph knows he needs to find a home for them.  Defeated, all he ends up with is an animal stable.  How emasculated he must feel!  What kind of a provider is that?  He knows from an angel's message that his wife is about to give birth to the Son of God and all he can provide for them is a stable.   Joseph could complain:

Where is God?

Couldn't he have found something better for us?

If this baby is the Son of God why didn't he help me find a decent home?

Why does God allow this?

Jesus is born and he sleeps in a manger.  No throne.  No home.  Just a poor, innocent infant who is heir to a kingdom.  This is what God chose for our sakes.  Jesus doesn't deserve this or anything that follows in The Story.  God chose this so that we could identify with him and he with us.   Jesus' was a life of struggle like many of our lives.  Staying close to the Father helped Mary, Joseph and Jesus thru it all. 

God, help us please.  Show us how to trust when things are tough.  Your own precious earthly family endured trials and challenges too.  If they had to, then why wouldn't we?  Teach us how to endure trials and remain faithful.