Oh the comfort of reading Elizabeth Goudge. It is like that of reading George Macdonald. From the Pilgrim's Inn, p.72:

"This sense of futility ... it's nothing, merely the reverse side of aspiration, and inevitable, just as failure is inevitable. Disregard them both. What can we expect when we aspire as we do,  yet remain as we are?

Struggle is divine in itself, but to ask to see it crowned with success is to ask for a sign which is forbidden to those who must travel by faith alone."