You need to remember that being rejected by church is not the same as being rejected by God. God did not kick you out of church, honey. The church kicked God out of church.
Being a mother is a little like 'Groundhog's Day.' It's getting out of bed and doing the exact same things again and again and yet again - and it's watching it all get undone again and again and yet again. It's humbling, monotonous, mind-numbing, and solitary.
Your body is not your art - it's your paintbrush. Whether your paintbrush is a tall paintbrush or a thin paintbrush or a stocky paintbrush or a scratched up paintbrush is completely irrelevant.
Rock bottom is a crisis... and everyone wants to avoid crisis. But what 'crisis' means literally is 'to sift' - like a child who goes to the beach, lifts up the sand, and watches all the sand fall away, hoping that there's treasure left over. That's what crisis does.
Love is kind, right? It's not about calling someone out on every little thing you feel.
I've never believed in or understood romantic love. Love at first sight was always a complete joke to me.
Pain is mandatory for all of us. It's what teaches us. Suffering is what's optional. That's what happens when we try to skip over the pain.
I don't think that I'm broken at all. I no longer think that I'm a mess. I just think I'm a deeply feeling person in a messy world.
It is suggested to us a million times a day that our bodies are projects. They aren't. Our lives are. Our spirituality is. Our relationships are. Our work is.
The Internet is neither good nor bad. It's neutral - it becomes for each of us exactly what we bring to it.
If no pain, then no love. If no darkness, no light. If no risk, then no reward. It's all or nothing. In this damn world, it's all or nothing.
We'll tell fear it can come along with us in our minivan, okay? But we'll just tell fear it can't drive. Sometimes we'll tell it to not even talk. Like when we tell our kids, 'Enough. No words.' We're going to play the quiet game with fear. Fear is not the boss of us.
I ask only child-free pals for parenting advice because they're the only ones sane and well-rested enough to have any real insight.
Habits are learned. And children learn their habits by watching what we do, not by listening to what we say. So we have to stop talking and teaching and preaching and just go do.
I wrote in my first book that I was broken, and now it just makes me mad every time. This is why writing words in books is so precarious. This is why Jesus only wrote in the sand, right? I just - I hate that I wrote that.
I just think that if we are going to call ourselves pro-life, we must also agree that starvation and poverty and disease and immigration and health care for all and war and peace and the environment are also pro-life issues.
A safe life includes following your dreams with the full knowledge that doing so is not, in any way, shape or form, safe in the traditional meaning of the word. Because living safely means dying without too many regrets. That is safe.
If grace isn't shocking and countercultural and scandalous and a little ridiculous, then it's not Grace.
One day we will finally see that when we reject any person or group of people, we reject a part of our very selves. All are one. All are in. All are God's beloved children with a place at the table.
Nothing separates a woman or a family from God's love. Not death, and certainly not divorce.
