Pure motivation

A couple waits eighteen years for a child. Then, when the boy turns eighteen, he lands in the hospital, and his father steps out on Erev Shabbos to buy groceries, working on himself the whole way to accept what Hashem sends. What happens when he comes back to the ward is not what he expects. It connects to Parshas Masei: why did Bnei Yisrael need forty-two stops to reach Eretz Yisrael, and why does the Gemara in Berachos say Torah, the Land and the World to Come all come through hardship? What does hardship reveal about why we do what we do?