I've heard a number of shuyukh say when a faqir, when a person on the Path has trouble, then he knows that he's basically on firm ground. It is when things start going well that the faqir gets worried because then he knows that sooner or later the difficulty is about to hit him.

In Surah Alam Nasrah, Allah subhana wa taala reassures us that in difficulty there's ease. We often think of this as subsequently to difficulty there's ease. But there's at least one way of reading this that suggests that the difficulty itself is the ease.