Love makes labour light. Love alone gives value to all things. - Teresa of Ávila

This good companionship began to root out the habits which bad companionship had formed, and to bring my thoughts back to the desire of eternal things.

determined to ask those of heaven to heal me — for I wished, nevertheless, to be well, though I bore my illness with great joy. Sometimes, too, I used to think that if I recovered my health, and yet were lost for ever, I was better as I was. But, for all that, I thought I might serve God much better if I were well. This is our delusion; we do not resign ourselves absolutely to the disposition of our Lord, Who knows best what is for our good.

… Spiritual betrothal is different… Even though by union is meant the joining of two things into one, each of the two, as is a matter of common observation, can be separated and remain a thing by itself… We might say that union is like the joining of two wax candles so that the flame coming from them is but one… Yet afterwards one candle can be easily separated from the other and there are two candles again.
In the spiritual marriage the union is like what we have when rain falls from the sky into a river or fount; all is water, for the rain that fell from heaven cannot be divided or separated from the water of the river. Or when a little stream enters the sea, there is no means of separating the two. Or, like the bright light entering a room through two windows; although the streams of light are separate when entering the room they become one.