It’s always been you, and no one else.
I think you’ll find, that where there is real love, there is always real hope.
For just a moment in time, we were just a boy and a girl, running and laughing in the rain on our wedding day.
They had lost so much more than me. And I thought to myself, if I’m going to encourage them to be strong, to find power beyond their own circumstances, then I have to be able to do the same for myself. People suffer all over the world, every day. But people triumph all over the world every day, too. And I thought if these women are going to trust me to help them heal and triumph, I have to be able to rise above, as well. And I did.
Life mixed me up with the wrong crowd.
Don’t let me destroy this.
He sifts through all the pebbles until he finds the smoothest one he can, and presents it to her as a token of his love.
You get my heart, Eloise. You. And, God, I hope you want it. But if you don’t, I still won’t regret giving it to you.
Reality could be so different than perception.
I’m not leaving you. I’m just not going to sneak around with you. You have a life.” She bit her lip, looking down. “I don’t blame you for that. But – ” “I know,” I said, feeling as if my heart was breaking open in my chest. “We deserve more than that.
Life was more than words. It was laughter and love, faith and joy, and mostly it was the deep peace came from living life fiercely without regret.
Our souls clung to each other as much as our bodies did. And yes, there was healing.
Is this the true definition of bravery: being afraid but acting anyway? Following the dictates of your faith and your heart straight into the battle for which you’ve been called? It seems to me to be so. For how is there bravery if there is no fear?
And then his mouth met mine and the taste of him was all I knew. I moaned, a wordless confession of my desire and complete willingness.
Hope is like a wisp of smoke on the horizon.
I try to close my eyes and believe that even though I can’t see the other side right then, and the side I’m looking at is ugly and muddled, there’s a masterpiece that’s being woven out of all the knots and loose strings. I try to believe that something beautiful can result from something ugly, and that there will come a time when I’ll get to see what that is.
But what I knew in that moment was that the size of your home, your car, your wallet, doesn’t have one single thing to do with the size of your life.
How do you know what to change, and what to hold on to?” I asked. Were there parts of me that were good and valuable, or did I scrap it all and start completely from scratch? And if that was the case, how in the hell did one go about doing that? Especially in a small town where stories became legend, and every buried secret eventually rose to the surface?
She asked me the sign for love and I spelled out your name. Bree let out small sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “So now she’s going to go around saying, ‘I Bree you’?” she asked, smiling, her eyes soft. I nodded. Yeah. I turned toward her more fully, focusing on her face. I stand by my logic, though. I think love is a concept, and each person has an individual word for what sums it up for them. My word for love is “Bree.
Fairy tales helped me disappear into worlds where princes were loyal and honest and where princesses were strong and brave.