“I don’t know much, but I understand how entirely doomed I am without God.”

But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on.

I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world-present and in awe.

I’m not going to change the way people think about me, but I can say you know what? I’m not going to carry that in my backpack.

One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline. But also every single day a kid needs a break.

Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we’re invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence.

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.

Pay attention to the beauty surrounding you.

Sometimes I think that Jesus watches my neurotic struggles, and shakes his head and grips his forehead and starts tossing back mojitos.

You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.

And as it turns out, if one person is praying for you, buckle up. Things can happen.

A big heart is both a clunky and a delicate thing; it doesn’t protect itself and it doesn’t hide. It stands out, like a baby’s fontanel, where you can see the soul pulse through.

A good marriage is where both people feel like they’re getting the better end of the deal.

Your inside person doesn’t age. Your inside person is soul, is heart, in the eternal now, the ageless, the old, the young, all the ages you’ve ever been.

You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don’t think your way into becoming yourself.

My God, I think about way back in the day when we were running around in Mary Janes and Doc Martens, that whole 90210-inspired look. I’m glad that’s long gone.

The greatest knowledge we can ever have is knowing God treasures us.

Jesus and Buddha cannot both be right.

The discovery there is no god is a great relief, because if there were, it would be like living in a celestial North Korea if there was one. You would never be able to escape.

If you are ignorant of God’s Word, you will always be ignorant of God’s will.

Don’t let circumstances distress you. Rather, look for the will of God for your life to be revealed in and through those circumstances.

God does not expect us to imitate Jesus Christ; He expects us to allow the life of Jesus to be manifested in our moral flesh.

God, I know you’ve been there. I know you’ve been there even if I didn’t feel you. I ask you open my heart up to you when I want to close it.