Fear builds walls instead of bridges. I want a life of bridges, not walls.

The truth was, I yearned, in a soul-deep way, to be Sarra. To ‘feel’ that God was so very close, so very concerned with my particular life, so very ready to protect and to love....

I wanted to write it on paper and fold it up in a box to remind myself, the next time I couldn’t see anything but mountains ahead, that where there’s a mountain, there’s always a...

The trouble with drowning in the mess of your own life is that you’re not in any shape to save anyone else. You can’t be a lighthouse when you’re underwater yourself.

Normal doesn’t happen overnight when the world around and between you has always been off-balance.

…The most important thing, I think. You can’t run from your past. You have to take it for what it is and realize that it’s part of you.

I heard my grandfathers voice. What do they think– the storms will never come? You build a house on the sand, the sand shifts eventually… Remember that.

One of the secrets to life, Epiphany, is to find your gifts and focus on those. Leave your liabilities in the dust of the road not taken. The world is an imperfect place. Everyone struggles....

If we never take a chance on people, we’ll never know.

My heart filled with Nick’s smile, with the look of sheer adoration he gave me as he lugged the bucket. In the space of an instant, I felt it again—the crumbling of an old part...

Your children are the greatest gift God will give to you, and their souls the heaviest responsibility He will place in your hands. Take time with them, teach them to have faith in God. Be...

Generally, crises were Mom’s domain. Dad’s job was to listen, nod, act curmudgeonly, and offer to pay for things.

The upscale neighborhoods in Blue Sky Hill weren’t all lily white anymore, but you could be sure their kids didn’t wear our kind of clothes, or get free lunches at the Summer Kitchen, or pick...

How often … do we pass by a need, a life that could be changed with the smallest bit of effort? And it’s not that we don’t care but that we’re driving so fast, all...

The hardest thing about the road not taken is that you never know where it might have led.

The past must be let go before the future can be grasped.

I wrote about the rush of love, the changing of a woman into a mother—a process that happened without conscious thought, as if the heart knew what the mind and body took time to learn....

Somewhere, deep within me, beyond the passion, beyond the beauty of the night, that little spark of Daily magic ignited in me again, began burning in a place that had gone dark and untended, that...

I think of an old sermon my grandfather quoted from time to time— something about not looking back when you’re plowing a field, but instead finding a mark in the distance and focusing on that....

Every decision you make in life has benefits and consequences. Sometimes you just have to go on faith, and even that comes at a price. It means you have to give up the idea that...

Sooner or later, the future always circles back to the past.

Even when we are lost, God has not lost us.

Eventually, you must stop running to something or from something and embrace where you are. Otherwise you’ll never embrace anything.

You let a possibility into your mind, you let it into your life.

Who are you, really? The question penetrated, echoed, demanded an answer. It nipped at me in ways I wasn’t prepared for, pinched in places I didn’t like. Was I really so entrenched in the world...

Help them to show the world that our greatness is not in things we do for ourselves, but in things we do for others.

What does a lighthouse do? I ask myself. It never moves. It cannot hike up its rocky skirt and dash into the ocean to rescue the foundering ship. It cannot calm the waters or clear...