I’ve come to tell you that it’s not your fault,” he said. “Michelle’s beyond suffering, and yet you suffer, trapped in this hell of your own making. Set yourself free, Olivia. Free to love your daughter as she is, not as you wish she could be. In this you will find more peace than you can possibly imagine.
We all get to discover who we really are at some point, and when we do, it can be quite unsettling.
What man would not romance a woman who had invited him? And what woman would not romance a man who had chosen her? It was the nature of the Great Romance.
Among a rising tide of millions of Christians, how we label ourselves isn’t nearly as important as how we actually experience and demonstrate Yeshua’s incredible power in and as us, beginning with the power to love our enemies. To us, this is what it means to know God and the One He sent. Words only reflect an intellectual dogma, but the expression of our lives shows our true dogma, which matters far more.
Yeshua shows us the Way to be saved from all that we think threatens us on the dark seas of our lives. Only when we, too, see what He sees can we leave the treasured boat that we think will save us and walk on the troubled waters that we thought would surely drown us.
If someone tries to follow the narrow way and does not set aside who they think they are and what they think they need, they cannot follow.
This is a labyrinth of wickedness and destruction and pleasure and, above all, love, because in the end it’s all just one big, mind-bending love story, isn’t it?
It seems as though we Christians have developed a nasty habit of leading people into a radical encounter with God’s unconditional love, forgiveness, acceptance, and union only to spend the ensuing years teaching them how to become close to God to earn his approval.
She was complete, wholly restored without even a hint of any need for further correction. The.
The temptation to forget is woven into the fabric of these... costumes.
Everything we say, do, and think, aligns us with darkness or light, love or grievance. Thus everything is a spiritual practice, whether we are aware of it or not. We are constantly, in every moment, aligning with one way of being or another. The choice is ours to make each moment of the day.
You will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free, for in that Truth you are free already.
I never doubted my standing in the next life, but I often felt shame in this life, constantly disappointing God in my failure to love as He asked me to love. As such, I was caught in a kind of stupor of unworthiness.
What does matter is whether or not we take offense when we think we’ve been wronged, regardless of who we think we are or what costume we’re wearing.
We all play our roles. One person plants the seed, another waters it, but it grows only when the season is right.
And yet when you get right down to it, we’re all the same – rich, poor, old, young, fat, skinny, white, brown, or purple – pick your costume, none of it really matters too much. What does matter is whether or not we take offense when we think we’ve been wronged, regardless of who we think we are or what costume we’re wearing.
Nothing has an uglier look to us than reason, when it’s not on our side,” Seth said. “Big ideas are so hard to recognize, so fragile, so easy to kill. People who don’t have them can’t possibly understand.
Even the bins looked beautiful to her. They simply were what they were and were doing a splendid job being just that.
What is it, then, that comprises our deepest selves and gives us worth?
Pain was not God’s plan for this life. It is a reality, but it is not part of the plan.” I.