Sonderquotes

Being Lavish

Stinginess sits at one end of the continuum.  At the other end is the experience of being lavish.  For many of us, that word produces an instant response: Oh, I couldn’t, I shouldn’t!  But if you don’t give to yourself, how will your life become abundant?  Lavish means stepping wholeheartedly into the big middle of life, rather than just tiptoeing partway in.  Lavish means letting the flow of life move freely through you.  Lavish isn’t busy trying to control everything (that’s stingy).  Lavish is juicy, and yes, it’s messy.  It’s alive.

– Victoria Castle, The Trance of Scarcity, p. 43

A Higher Way

It is not punishment.  God never punishes.  And He well knows how you have been longing to do His will.  This sickness has been given you as a loving message to help you understand that there was a still higher and more heavenly way of reacting to the wounds and troubles that you were experiencing than you knew about.  Certainly God gave you a glorious victory even though your feelings were so wounded; you were delivered from resentment and were able to accept it all with forgiveness.  But perhaps there was a little self-pity because you did not realize about the glorious principle I have been sent to share with you.  For there is a still higher level of acceptance possible, and that is to accept everything that happens with praise, thanksgiving, and joy, knowing that every seeming affliction is really a blessing in disguise.  God allows only the very best things possible to happen to you at any particular time; that is to say, exactly the things and situations that are best fitted to help you, because they afford you the opportunity of reacting just as Jesus did.  Learning by His grace to react with praise and thanksgiving even to things that appear most evil, unjust, cruel, and deplorable, because God is allowing this opportunity to bring good out of evil, is just like waving a magic wand over an evil enchantment and being able to replace cruel spells with heavenly miracles.

– Hannah Hurnard, Eagles’ Wings to the Higher Places, p. 56-57

Miracles

It is a miracle if you can find true friends, and it is a miracle if you have enough food to eat, and it is a miracle if you get to spend your days and evenings doing whatever it is you like to do, and the holiday season — like all the other seasons — is a good time not only to tell stories of miracles, but to think about the miracles in your own life, and to be grateful for them.

– Lemony Snicket, The Lump of Coal

Specific Gratitude

We often say, “All of life should be lived in gratitude,” but this gratitude is only possible if at certain times we give thanks in a very concrete and visible way.

– Henri J. M. Nouwen, Clowning in Rome, p. 73-74

Gratitude Makes Things Right.

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have into enough, and more.  It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.  It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.  It turns problems into gifts, failures into successes, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events.  It can turn an existence into real life, and disconnected situations into important and beneficial lessons.  Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Gratitude makes things right.

– Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, p. 218

The Opposite of Resentment

Along with trust there must be gratitude — the opposite of resentment.  Resentment and gratitude cannot coexist, since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift.  My resentment tells me that I don’t receive what I deserve.  It always manifests itself in envy.

Gratitude, however, goes beyond the “mine” and “thine” and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift.  In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline.  The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.

Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice.  I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment.  It is amazing how many occasions present themselves in which I can choose gratitude instead of a complaint.  I can choose to be grateful when I am criticized, even when my heart still responds in bitterness.  I can choose to speak about goodness and beauty, even when my inner eye still looks for someone to accuse or something to call ugly.  I can choose to listen to the voices that forgive and to look at the faces that smile, even while I still hear words of revenge and see grimaces of hatred.

– Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, p. 85

Wanting What You Have

Happy women know they can be rich for life if they focus more on what they have than on what they want.

– Dan Baker, PhD, and Cathy Greenburg, PhD, What Happy Women Know, p. 234

God’s Gifts

It’s not what [God] isn’t giving but what he is giving.  We can get so locked onto what we don’t have, what we think we want or need, that we miss the gifts God is giving.

– John Eldredge, Walking with God, p. 68

Appreciate What You Have

If you keep in mind that happiness depends more on your state of mind than it does on your bank statement, you will understand that there can be only one tool to free you from the money trap:  Appreciate and focus on what you have and don’t lament what you don’t have.

If you focus on what you don’t have, you’re going to be miserable.  And that will happen again and again, because guaranteed, there will always be someone who has more than you do.  If you look instead at what you do have, and I mean across the board, not simply the house and the car — if you look at your relationships and anything else that is meaningful to you, you cannot help but embrace and celebrate life for what it is. . . .

In the end, happy women know it’s not the woman who dies with the most pairs of shoes who garners the prize; it’s the one who has had the most fun dancing in them who is truly the winner.

– Dan Baker, PhD, and Cathy Greenberg, PhD, What Happy Women Know, p. 60-61

God’s Choice

For the Christian who has embraced God’s sovereignty, the choice is God’s; and the result, whatever that choice may be, is rejoicing.  In Him is our joy and peace.  If He gives marriage, then in marriage we rejoice.  If He gives singleness, we rejoice in singleness.  In whatever state we are, we know contentment.

– Margaret Clarkson, So You’re Single, p. 117