People often think holding on is what makes you strong, but sometimes it’s letting go. I was committed to releasing all that haunted me from this relationship. I wanted to learn from it, yes, but I was no longer willing to be chained to the memories that made me feel inadequate, insecure, and fearful.
— Christi Paul, Love Isn’t Supposed to Hurt, p. 159
We have been taught to think of tears as signs of weakness instead of liquid triggers for a body’s reserve of strength and endurance to kick in.
— Sarah Ban Breathnach, Peace and Plenty, p. 7
If his partner confronts his verbal battering, if she recognizes it for what it is, if she asks for change and he refuses, if his attitude is, as one abuser put it, “I can say anything I want!” the partner may realize that he can say anything he wants, however, she may also realize that there is nothing heroic about staying around to hear it.
— Patricia Evans, The Verbally Abusive Relationship, p. 34
From deep in the tradition, from The Cloud of Unknowing, a fourteenth-century text from an unnamed English monk: “You only need a tiny scrap of time to move toward God.”
The words slap. Busyness is not much of an excuse if it only takes a minute or two to move toward God.
But the monk’s words console, too. For, of time and person, it seems that scraps are all I have to bring forward. That my ways of coming to God these days are all scraps.
— Lauren F. Winner, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, p. 108
I believe serving God means being true to who He made you to be. It means allowing yourself to feel and be cognizant of the God-given desires stirring inside you. He isn’t going to call you to be a doctor if the sight of blood makes you queasy. He isn’t going to ask you to step onto a stage and sing if you’re tone deaf and prone to stage fright. It’s true that God may put us in uncomfortable positions sometimes. But His purpose in those times is for us to grow, not for us to fail.
— Christi Paul, Love Isn’t Supposed to Hurt, p. 90-91
But bear in mind that healing is above all a learning experience, and one of its biggest lessons is that life is characterized by impermanence and flux. If you can learn to accept change with equanimity, you will have mastered a lot more than just an illness.
— Caroline Myss, Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, p. 171
When I coach students through essay writing, I invariably give the most able the same direction: go deeper, go deeper. In each iteration, reveal more, of who you truly are, of what you really think. That’s the hallmark of aging, too, that we learn to go deeper, in our friendships, in our family life, in our reflections on how we live and how we face the future. The reason we develop an equanimity about our lives and ourselves is that we have gone deep into what has real meaning.
— Anna Quindlen, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, p. 149
The last few years have afforded me much experience in Coping with the Crappy Parts of Life referenced in the title of this book. However, it must be said that the Crap, plentiful as it has admittedly been, is overshadowed still by the Amazing, the Humbling, the Gratifying, and the Nifty. My prayer for us all is that we’re always able to pay more attention to those things in our lives and laugh our way around the Crap.
— Jill Conner Browne, Fat Is the New 30: The Sweet Potato Queens’ Guide to Coping with (the crappy parts of) Life, p. vii
Listen to how someone prays — it will reveal what they really think about Jesus. Does he sound near, or does the prayer make him seem far away, up above the sky somewhere? Does it sound as though Jesus might be someone we are bothering with our requests, someone with far more important things to do? Does he have a sense of humor, or is he always serious? Is it formal, and religious, or “Good morning, Papa”? Do they even sound like they know him? Really, listen to their prayers. Listen to your own.
We interpret Jesus through our brokenness. A painful truth, but also a hopeful truth. Maybe we can open up the doors and windows we didn’t know we closed….
This is actually good news, friends — a fair share of your difficulty with Jesus is simply your own brokenness getting in the way. It’s good news because it enables us to realize that our perceptions may be wrong, that this isn’t what Jesus is like — this is our brokenness talking. And second, healing our brokenness is exactly what Jesus came to do. How did he handle every broken person that ever came to him?
— John Eldredge, Beautiful Outlaw, p. 159-160
Patience is supported and nurtured by a quality of forgiveness. Understanding that others, just like ourselves, are affected by stress, disappointment, and frustration is the first step toward being able to forgive, to let it go. Forgiveness of others becomes possible as we learn to forgive ourselves. When anger, resentment, bitterness, irritation, and other such feelings take hold of us, we can’t enjoy peace or a feeling of ease. When others sense our anger, and they will, they can find it difficult to trust us. Thus, we create unrest not only for ourselves, but for those around us as well. On the other hand, when we begin to conscientiously overcome our anger, happiness and inner peace will be present more often.
Allan Lokos, Patience, p. 26