I felt like I was being carried over the threshold of a sisterhood of loss. I knew I was not walking alone, and that eventually I would bob back up to the surface of the deep, because the women around me showed me what healing looks like.

God wants to take the fears that you and I are holding onto with both hands. He throws them aside, effortless, and then takes our empty hands in His and fills them with his love. He is not a hard driver. He wants to provide.

The griefs that have been hardest for me were the ones I didn’t recognize as griefs, because they came in what were supposed to be the best times of my life. No one whispered in my ear that the best times, the ones that change our lives, are woven with the thread of loss.

I'm broken, but I have to learn how to live. I feel stuck together with scotch tape, like after any breath everything could come apart. If it does, if it all comes undone, I think I'll fall down and never rise again.

The road to the heart is not a long, linear path, but this turning. There is no race or competition, just me and God going deeper, carving a canyon to the soul.

This is the only advice I offer you. Pick the small thing, and carry it on. Let it change your life.

Every day is a new beginning, the building of a habit. Every action is a step in some direction. There is no pause in living.

Love lights our darkness. It is forever tries.

In this week I see such a picture of life, hard and joyful pressed up together and sleeping in the same bed. They come knit together. The lines of pain run through the joy and remind us to go all in, because life is short. The joy edges the pain and gives us a reason to rise.

I am not enough in myself; I can barely make it through buying milk and school supplies. Thank goodness there is a Guardian to come before me and throw off the dark.