Don’t be who you needed to be over there. Come home to the people who love you. I wish to hell I’d figured out a way to do that.
If you’re going through hell, keep going. – WINSTON CHURCHILL.
White sheets flapped in the breeze and roses tumbled like laughter along the ancient stone wall that hid her property from the road.
My dearest Tully – I am so sorry. I know how afraid you are of being alone, of being left behind, but God has His plan for all of us. I would have stayed with you longer if I could have. Your grandfather and I will always be watching out for you from Heaven.
Talking about Meghann’s painful choice and the lonely years that had followed it wouldn’t help. Her past wasn’t a collection of memories to be worked through; it was like an oversize Samsonite with a bum wheel.
Life is short, her dad had said. She knew it was true. Every motherless child knew that. But just now, with her husband’s voice droning on and on, she couldn’t quite grasp hold of that. Because there was something else, equally true. When you were forty-five years old and missing out, it felt as if life were very long indeed.
All her life she had waited – longed for – people to love her, but now she saw what really mattered. She had known love, been blessed by it.
For all my dreams of complex new beginnings and convoluted endings, it can be as easy as this: a boy singing hymns again.
A delicious fragrance wafted upward – roasted pork and crispy bacon and apples glazed in a rich wine sauce, resting on a bed of browned potatoes. Beside it was a bowl of fresh peas, swimming in butter seasoned with tarragon from the garden. And of course there was the baguette Vianne had made yesterday morning.
If I’ve learned nothing else in the past few days, it’s that happiness must be fought for.
I feel like Dorothy, back in Kansas, a black-and-white girl in a black-and-white world, with memories in color.
Teach the boys how to be gentlemen and Marah how to be strong.
She tried to take strength from that, to truly believe it, but hope was becoming difficult to hold on to. Each passing day had sanded her down, weakened the walls of her denial; in places, fear called itself truth and poked through.
For me, admitting that I won’t decorate a tree for Christmas is giving up, and I’ve never been good at letting go.
Grief is a sneaky thing, always coming and going like some guest you didn’t invite and can’t turn away.
I am afraid t put it into words, this fragile impossible hope of mine, and more afraid not to.
Like the famous John Muir quote – The mountains are calling and I must go.
Love can get us through the hardest times. It can also be our hardest times.
Annie had made so many mistakes, and most of them had been because she’d planted herself firmly in the middle of the road. But now she knew that life without risk was impossible, and if by chance you stumbled across a safe, serene existence, it was because you’d never really reached for anything in the first place.
I am stronger than I use to be.” As I say the words, I realize the truth of them. I am stronger now. Strong enough to reach for this dream... and strong enough to handle disappointment.