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Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.

Anne Lamott

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.
ANNE LAMOTT

Age Heart Old Person Soul Young Yourself
You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.
ANNE LAMOTT

Better People Story Warm Writing Yourself
When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.
ANNE LAMOTT

God Himself Impossible Start Wonderful
You are not your bank account, or your ambitiousness. You’re not the cold clay lump with a big belly you leave behind when you die. You’re not your collection of walking personality disorders. You are spirit, you are love.
ANNE LAMOTT

Ambition Collection Love Order Personality Spirit Walk Yourself
If we stay where we are, where we’re stuck, where we’re comfortable and safe, we die there… When nothing new can get in, that’s death.
ANNE LAMOTT

Comfortable Death Safety Stay
Hope begins in the dark.
ANNE LAMOTT

Beginning Darkness Hope
Everyone is flailing through this life without an owner’s manual, with whatever modicum of grace and good humor we can manage.
ANNE LAMOTT

Goodness Grace Life Management
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.
ANNE LAMOTT

Carry Change Myself People Thinking
Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don’t make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.
ANNE LAMOTT

Explanation Hard Health Human Live Message Privilege Suffering
Expectations are resentments under construction.
ANNE LAMOTT

Construction Expectation Regret
Grace means you’re in a different universe from where you had been stuck, when you had absolutely no way to get there on your own.
ANNE LAMOTT

Different Grace Universe Yourself
I don’t remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don’t even know exist until you love a child.
ANNE LAMOTT

Children Existence Heart Place Remember
And as it turns out, if one person is praying for you, buckle up. Things can happen.
ANNE LAMOTT

Inspirational Myself Person Prayer
I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.
ANNE LAMOTT

Drink God Myself Thinking
So a moral position is not a message. A moral position is a passionate caring inside you.
ANNE LAMOTT

Care Message Moral Passionate Position Yourself
I didn’t need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.
ANNE LAMOTT

Myself Tree Understand Unity
How do you begin? The answer is simple: you decide to.
ANNE LAMOTT

Beginning Decision Simplicity Yourself
Here are the two best prayers I know: ‘Help me, help me, help me’ and ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.
ANNE LAMOTT

Best Help Prayer Thankful
I can tell you that what you’re looking for is already inside you.
ANNE LAMOTT

Inspirational Motivational Myself Yourself
Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, ‘Well, isn’t that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I’ll figure out what we’re going to do about your stuff.
ANNE LAMOTT

God Need Water Woman Yourself
I am going to notice the lights of the earth, the sun and the moon and the stars, the lights of our candles as we march, the lights with which spring teases us, the light that is already present.
ANNE LAMOTT

Earth Light Myself Present Sun
I spent my whole life helping my mother carry around her psychic trunks like a bitter bellhop. So a great load was lifted when she died, and my life was much easier.
ANNE LAMOTT

Carry Death Easy Greatness Life Mom Ourselves
Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, “I hate you, God.” That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you’ve had in months.
ANNE LAMOTT

God Hate Prayer Sincere Thinking Yourself
Laughter is carbonated holiness.
ANNE LAMOTT

Holy Laughter One Liner
I’m human, you’re human, let me greet your humanness. Let’s be people together for a while.
ANNE LAMOTT

Human People Togetherness Yourself
Laughter is a bubbly, effervescent form of holiness.
ANNE LAMOTT

Holy Laughter
Butterflies and birds are like one perfect teaspoon of creation.
ANNE LAMOTT

Animal Creation Oneself Perfection

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.

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Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.

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