“The sad thing is that many of us come to Christ because we are sinners, and then spend the rest of our lives trying to pretend that we are not!”

Leave your pride, ego, and narcissism somewhere else. Reactions from those parts of you will reinforce your children’s most primitive fears.

One of the worst things you can die with is potential.

Love can only exist where freedom and responsibility are operating.

You will not grow without attempting to do things you are unable to do.

If your boundary training consists only of words, you are wasting your breath. But if you ‘do’ boundaries with your kids, they internalize the experiences, remember them, digest them, and make them part of how they see reality.

The amount of truth a relationship can handle is proportional to the amount of perceived love that’s present.

In a very real way, ownership is the essence of leadership. When you are ridiculously in charge, then you own whatever happens in a company, school.

The human heart will seek to be known, understood, and connected with above all else. If you do not connect, the ones you care about will find someone who will.

If people are really narcissistic or have a need to be seen as more than they really are, or to be admired as having it all together, then they cannot be followed and trusted by others.

Encourage literally came from “in courage.” The courage is put “into” you from outside. Our character and abilities grow through internalizing from others what we do not possess in ourselves.

For someone’s character to grow, it has to be free from internal attack. Falling down never stopped children from developing. But getting yelled at, criticized, and put down can stop them for life.

Faith goes beyond reason. It goes beyond what you can see. But it is as real as anything you can touch or feel.

To get greater than 100% return on a growth step, give up defensiveness. Defensiveness stifles performance, and destroys relationships.

Marriage is not slavery. It is based on a love relationship deeply rooted in freedom. Each partner is free from the other and therefore free to love the other. Where there is control, or perception of control, there is not love. Love only exists where there is freedom.

The mature person meets the demands of life, while the immature person demands that life meet her demands.

We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change.

Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.

I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.

Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.

Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.

You reach out your hand, but you’re all alone, in those time passages.

Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.

That sadness that you do not speak of, that haunts you in the ache of midnight. Give it to me, I want to heal that.

People aren’t born sad; we make them that way.