God doesn’t comfort you from a distance. He’s worn nails; He knows what hurting is.

Comfort offered from outside the experience only reaches so far. What changes the quality of it is knowing the person speaking has been where you are, because then the words are not a guess about suffering, they are a report from inside it. That is the claim being made here, and it is a strong one: the comfort is not distant.

When you pray in a hard stretch, say the actual thing rather than the tidy version. You are not explaining your pain to someone who needs it translated. Let that change how honest you are willing to be.