Sonderquotes

Don’t Get Ahead of Your Nose

God’s presence can’t be experienced except moment by moment, and that means we have to show up in each moment.  Getting ahead of this moment in regard to our relationships, our vocations, our dreams, and aspirations simply prevents us from knowing God. . . .

In my role as a mentor to a number of young women, I often say, “Don’t get ahead of your nose.”  It’s a great reminder that one is projecting, and it quickly brings us back to the present.  I also suggest that whenever thoughts of the future come into your mind, you envision blowing them away.  This may sound silly but it’s effective.  I have used it for years.

Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow, p. 29

Choosing to Let Go

You always have the choice between hanging on and letting go.  Next time you’re beginning to feel overly victimized by life, practice saying, “So what?” to yourself and feel the anxiety drop away.

– Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow, p. 22

Scar Tissue

There isn’t anything that happens that can’t teach us something, that can’t be turned into something positive.  One can’t undo what’s been done, but one can use it creatively….  The only thing is to accept, and let the scar heal.  Scar tissue is the strongest tissue in the body….  So, I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s the strongest part of the soul.

– Madeleine L’Engle, A House Like a Lotus, quoted by Carole F. Chase in Glimpses of Grace, p. 271

Exciting Possibilities

When the heart is ready for a fresh beginning, unforeseen things can emerge.  And in a sense, this is exactly what a beginning does.  It is an opening for surprises.  Surrounding the intention and the act of beginning, there are always exciting possibilities.

– John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us, p. 5

Learning to Wait

I’ve started to realize that waiting is an art, that waiting achieves things.  Waiting can be very, very powerful.  Time is a valuable thing.  If you can wait two years, you can sometimes achieve something that you could not achieve today, however hard you worked, however much money you throw up in the air, however many times you banged your head against the wall.

– The Courage to Change by Dennis Wholey

. . .

We don’t have to put our life on hold while we wait.  We can direct our attention elsewhere; we can practice acceptance and gratitude in the interim; we can trust that we do have a life to live while we are waiting — then we go about living it.

– Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, p. 293

New Choices

That’s the heartening news for those of us on a spiritual path.  We don’t have to do what we always did!  We don’t have to think the way we always thought.  We don’t have to expect what we always expected.

– Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow, p. 19-20

Repeating Apologies

Once we make an apology, we don’t have to keep repeating it.  If someone wants to keep on extricating an apology from us for the same incident, that is the person’s issue, and we don’t have to get hooked.

– Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, p. 273

Walking Away

Walking away doesn’t mean agreeing with your adversary.  On the contrary, it means nothing more than that you have made the choice to disengage.  These days, I actually relish every opportunity to let a situation pass me by that would have engaged my ire in the past.  I feel empowered every time I make this choice.

– Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow, p. 18

Change

Happy women know that with each phase of life, they give up something, but they also get something in return.

– Dan Baker, PhD, and Cathy Greenberg, PhD, What Happy Women Know, p. 236

Perspective

Perspective will come in retrospect.

We could strain for hours today for the meaning of something that may come in an instant next year.

Let it go.  We can let go of our need to figure things out, to feel in control.

Now is the time to be.  To feel.  To go through it.  To allow things to happen.  To learn.  To let whatever is being worked out in us take its course.

In hindsight, we will know.  It will become clear.  For today, being is enough.  We have been told that all things shall work out for good in our life.  We can trust that to happen, even if we cannot see the place today’s events will hold in the larger picture.

– Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, p. 263