It’s not that I can’t spend a day without you. It’s that I don’t want to.
My legs swing carefree and easy as I sit here on the brink. It’s strange how they threaten to pull me down in one thoughtless moment, one desperate move to erase the last few years of a miserable existence.
New beginnings always start in the here-and-now.
I will say this: sheer repetition of a dare over time can be enough to drive a person into submission. Insane submission.
Humility is a rare yet valued accessory that looks good on everyone.
Peace is the natural result of righteous living. It comes when we are charitable. It blossoms as we spread joy to the world. It remains so long as we keep sacred covenants, commandments, and promises. And during those faithful, sometimes desperate moments, we cling to God, it acts as a sure anchor. Let me repeat the truth: genuine inner peace is the natural result of righteous living.
If God commands it, have the faith to obey. Know that Heavenly Father gives no commandment that is not meant for our ultimate welfare.
If only I could take it all back. If only I could change a few early choices, those seemingly unimportant, insignificant choices. How vital they appear to me now. How different my life would be if I had not allowed even the least degree of sin to enter in. But time can be turned backwards for no one.
When you make righteous choices and then experience the eventual results, you learn to love what is good. Likewise, when you make unrighteous choices and then experience the eventual consequences, you learn why sin is best avoided.
The choices were mine. The errors, mine. But if people only understood how those mistakes were never intended. If only they understood how I never meant to end up here. Not like this. Never this broken. Never this stained. Perhaps if they understood, they would cease to speak of me in the cold, judgmental way they do. If only one person understood.
The seemingly easy way out is never an easy road.
With bowed head, I act on that glimmer of hope; I pour out my heart to God in prayer as the moon slowly rises higher in the night. It shrinks to its normal size, no longer the ominous monster it appeared to be earlier.
Be patient with God. Have faith in his timing. Listen to the gentle promptings that come to your heart and mind. In time, you will see His hand at work in your life.
To mute all other voices but one’s own, to live true to that voice – that is being bold.
I am a child of God, and He loves me. I know it. I feel it in a surge of internal warmth that is almost too great to contain. Peace settles over my entire being, and my sins, though serious, appear surmountable for the first time in ages.
Yes, I am uncertain and a little afraid of what the future holds. Nonetheless, I have confidence that whatever lies ahead will preserve what is dear to me and consume the darkest shadows of my past. Some memories I will treasure forever. Some memories are best erased.
What does freedom mean? It means warriors are fighting for you, defenses are protecting you, and soldiers are sacrificing to preserve your ability to speak, to act, to live, and to express yourself in a world where a great many aggressors would oppress those freedoms if not for the heroic resistance preventing them.
Find ways to be happy despite the world’s attempts to thwart you.
Becoming the person you want to be always involves work. It requires purpose, dedication, perseverance, and a fair amount of deliberate change.
Christmas is like softly-falling snow that covers the world in a blanket of white so flawless and brilliant as to make us pause to ponder the miracle.