Our fondest dreams for this life, the ones we naturally believe are essential to our happiness, must be fully abandoned if we are to know God well.
But we cannot abandon them without help. The help we need, most often, is suffering, the pain of seeing at least a few of our fondest dreams shattered.
— Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams, p. 52
The obligations of normal human kindness — chesed, as the Hebrew has it — that we all owe. But there’s a kind of vanity in thinking you can nurse the world. There’s a kind of vanity in goodness.
— Madeleine L’Engle, A Ring of Endless Light
When a relationship is over, it stings, and it’s frightening because you don’t know what lies ahead. The good news is that what happens from there on is up to you. If you want to be happy, let go of the belief that you are nothing without him and take on the attitude that you are and can be what you choose to be without him. In fact, let’s just leave him out of the sentence altogether. Now it reads: You are and can be what you choose to be. So choose to be independent. Choose to be strong. Choose to be happy.
— Dan Baker, PhD, and Cathy Greenberg, PhD, What Happy Women Know, p. 127
Surrender to the pain. Then learn to surrender to the good. It’s there and more is on the way. Love God. Love Family. Love what you do. Love people, and learn to let them love you. And always keep on loving yourself.
No matter how good it gets, the best is yet to come.
— Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency: And Getting Better All the Time, p. 245
You cannot change others. More people suffer from trying to change others than from any other sickness. And it is impossible.
What you can do is influence others. But there is a trick. Since you cannot get them to change, you must change yourself so that their destructive patterns no longer work on you. Change your way of dealing with them; they may be motivated to change if their old ways no longer work.
Another dynamic that happens when you let go of others is that you begin to get healthy, and they may notice and envy your health. They may want some of what you have.
One more thing. You need the wisdom to know what is you and what is not you. Pray for the wisdom to know the difference between what you have the power to change and what you do not.
— Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend, Boundaries, p. 89
Wouldn’t it be easier to skip this whole business? If we can’t hang on to our desires, wouldn’t it be simpler not to acknowledge them in the first place?
Probably. But it doesn’t work that way. There’s something magical and necessary about the process, the way it stands. The victory, joy, and growth aren’t achieved by avoiding. The rewards come by overcoming. Each time we surrender, each time we let go, we’ll be propelled forward on our journey. We’ll be moved to a deeper level of play.
— Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency, p. 243-244
This is at least some of what it means to “wait on the Lord.” Waiting on God does not mean passive indifference — hanging around and doing nothing. It has more to do with saying no to impulsive, spur-of-the-moment actions or decisions, and by so doing, saying yes to something you know will satisfy much better down the line. Those who have not yet learned how to wait on the Lord may tend to indulge in something immediate that only half satisfies. But Christians who have fostered a degree of self-control — Christians who know God better — don’t mind putting pleasure on hold. They know something better is brewing down the line.
— Joni Eareckson Tada, Pearls of Great Price, May 2 entry
Throughout this book, I’ve been carrying on about men and finding them and getting them and keeping them and deciding whether or not to kill them, and if so, how, and so on. And that’s all funny and mostly true and all that, but the real truth is you are enough — just the way you are, just who you are. You are a complete entity, a whole person, right there in the skin you’re in. You don’t need to have a guy to be happy. Admit it: You have more fun with a gang of girlfriends than you’ve had on the absolute best date of your entire life. If somebody comes along who treats you right and makes you happy and you can do the same for him, well, that’s just dandy. But I’m telling you, the only way that I know to get and keep a happy, healthy relationship is first to create a happy and healthy life for yourself without one. This is your life to live.
— Jill Conner Browne, The Sweet Potato Queens’ Field Guide to Men, p. 206
It’s a good thing to have all props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand. It stops us from taking anything for granted.
— Madeleine L’Engle, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, quoted in Glimpses of Grace, compiled by Carole F. Chase, p. 104
When my children were young, they loved brightly colored helium balloons. But sometimes either accidentally or purposely, they’d let go of the string. There they’d stand, with tears in their eyes, watching their precious balloon fly high into the heavens until it disappeared from sight.
When that happened, I’d tell them a story.
“Don’t cry,” I’d say. “God’s up there. And you know what? He catches every balloon you let go of. He’s keeping all of them just for you. Someday, when you get to heaven, you’ll get every one back.”
My children are older now; so am I. But we still believe God’s saving our balloons for us.
And I believe God catches all our balloons too — each one we let go of. Only we don’t have to wait until we get to heaven to get them back. The best and most perfect of our balloons, the ones just right for us, He gives back as soon as we’re ready to accept them. Sometimes, He gives back better ones than we let go of.
— Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency, p. 243