Inspiration

"It is not possible to sin enough to be happy. It isn't possible to buy enough to be happy, or to entertain or indulge or pamper ourselves enough to be happy. It is not possible to hide enough or run far enough away from trials and troubles to be happy. Happiness and joy come only when we are living up to who we are...

{ children of God }

I have never met anyone who was happier because he was immoral, or because he was addicted to something, or because he was dishonest and compromised his integrity. "

 Sheri Dew

   *****

If I Had my Child To Raise Over Again
by Diane Loomans
If I had my child to raise all over again,
I'd build self-esteem first, and the house later.
I'd finger paint more, and point the finger less.
I would do less correcting and more connecting.
I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.
I would care to know less and know to care more.
I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.
I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play.
I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars,
I'd do more hugging and less tugging.
I'd see the oak tree in the acorn more often,
I would be firm less often, and affirm much more.
I'd model less about the love of power,
And more about the power of love

 *****
Why Not You?
By Steve Maraboli

Today, many will awaken with a fresh sense of inspiration. Why not you?

Today, many will open their eyes to the beauty that surrounds them. Why not you?

Today, many will choose to leave the ghost of yesterday behind and seize the immeasurable power of today. Why not you?

Today, many will break through the barriers of the past by looking at the blessings of the present. Why not you?

Today, for many the burden of self doubt and insecurity will be lifted by the security and confidence of empowerment. Why not you?

Today, many will rise above their believed limitations and make contact with their powerful innate strength. Why not you?

Today, many will choose to live in such a manner that they will be a positive role model for their children. Why not you?

Today, many will choose to free themselves from the personal imprisonment of their bad habits. Why not you?

Today, many will choose to live free of conditions and rules governing their own happiness. Why not you?

Today, many will find abundance in simplicity. Why not you?

Today, many will be confronted by difficult moral choices and they will choose to do what is right instead of what is beneficial. Why not you?

Today, many will decide to no longer sit back with a victim mentality, but to take charge of their lives and make positive changes. Why not you?

Today, many will take the action necessary to make a difference. Why not you?

Today, many will make the commitment to be a better mother, father, son, daughter, student, teacher, worker, boss, brother, sister, & so much more. Why not you?

Today is a new day!
Many will seize this day.
Many will live it to the fullest.
Why not you? 

*****

"I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautiful tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with grass stains on my shoes from mowing Sister Schenk's lawn. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt form making sandwiches for a sick neighbor's children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my nails from helping weed someone's garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheek and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived."
Sister Hinckley  

Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy.
Audre Lorde 

Grace means more than gifts. In grace something is transcended, once and for all overcome. Grace happens in spite of something; it happens in spite of separateness and alienation. Grace means that life is once again united with life, self is reconciled with self. Grace means accepting the abandoned one. Grace transforms fate into a meaningful vocation. It transforms guilt to trust and courage. The word grace has something triumphant in it.

- Yrjo Kallinen

 Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Most people can look back over the years and identify a time and place at which their lives changed significantly. Whether by accident or design, these are the moments when, because of a readiness within us and a collaboration with events occurring around us, we are forced to seriously reappraise ourselves and the conditions under which we live and to make certain choices that will affect the rest of our lives.

- Frederick F. Flack

 Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.
Oliver Wendell Holmes


To listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention, completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.

- Mark Nepo

I don't think you get to good writing unless you expose yourself and your feelings. Deep songs don't come from the surface; they come from the deep down. The poetry and the songs that you are suppose to write, I believe are in your heart.

- Judy Collins

"My friends, if we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of, 'I could have I should have.' We can sleep in a storm."
Mitch Albom have a little faith

"A strong woman is one who feels deeply and loves fiercely. Her tears flow just as abundantly as her laughter. A strong woman is both soft and powerful. She is both practical and spiritual. A strong woman in her essence is a gift to the world."

At North Farm by John Ashbery

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?

He Maketh No Mistake
My Father’s way may twist and turn,
My heart may throb and ache,
But in my soul I’m glad to know,
He maketh no mistake.
My cherished plans may go astray,
My hopes may fade away,
But I’ll trust my Lord to lead
For He doth know the way.
Tho’ night be dark, and it may seem
That day will never break,
I’ll pin my faith, my all in Him,
He maketh no mistake.
There’s so much now I cannot see,
My eyesight’s far too dim;
But come what may, I’ll simply trust
And leave it all to Him.
For by and by the mist will lift
And plain it all He’ll make,
Through all the way, tho’ dark to me
He made not one mistake.
by A.M. Overton

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

We pray for blessings, we pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering

All the while You hear each spoken need
Yet love is way too much to give us lesser things

'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears?
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You're near?

What if trials of this life
Are Your mercies in disguise?

We pray for wisdom, Your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough

And all the while You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe

'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears?
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You're near?

And what if trials of this life
Are Your mercies in disguise?

When friends betray us, when darkness seems to win
We know that pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home
It's not our home

'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears?
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You're near?

What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst
This world can't satisfy?

And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise?
{laura story:blessings} 

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. 
cslewis

What did it feel like, I wondered, to love someone that much? So much that you couldn’t even control yourself when they came close, as if you might just break free of whatever was holding you and throw yourself at them with enough force to easily overwhelm you both.

 sarah dessen this lullaby

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.
Barbara Kingsolver

All I’d ever wanted was to forget. but even when I thought I had, pieces had kept emerging, like bits of wood floating up to the surface that only hint at the shipwreck below. 
Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)

I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more.

Anaïs Nin

And every time I saw her, she seemed more beautiful. She just seemed to glow. I’m not talking like a hundred-watt bulb; she just had this warmth to her.

Bryce Loski, Flipped by Wendelin Van Draneen

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof.

Barbara Kingsolver

The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that is has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now say that two being have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only. The rest is only the rest, and comes afterwards. Nothing is more real than these great shocks which two souls give each other in exchanging this spark.

Victor Hugo

So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky 

I wondered again why the right thing always seemed to be met with so much resistance, when you’d think it would be the easier path. You had to fight to be virtuous, or so I was noticing.

Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen

If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn’t be filled?

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

We had a love so strong.. that is just seemed like we were one. I would get ready to tell him something and he would open his mouth and say the very thing, that I was fixing to tell him. And then. there were those moments when I would lay my head on his chest just to listen to his heart beat. And then one night. I realized that his heart beat, matched mine. I have had an opportunity that few people ever get on this earth. God has blessed me to share time and space with a man that he designed himself just for me. I’ve not only been blessed.. I have been divinely favored.

Aunt Myrtle, Madea’s Family Reunion

Everyone has their weak spot. The one thing that, despite your best efforts, will always bring you to your knees, regardless of how strong you are otherwise.

Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key) 

Even after all this time, the Sun never says to the Earth, “You owe me.” Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky.

Hafiz  

In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?

Siddhārtha Gautama

I sit here thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life…I say to myself, That’s okay—this is real, this is something I can handle, I’m just sitting here, I’m not doing anything bad. And then I leave because I can’t accept the brokenness.

Let the Great World Spin

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.

Roald Dahl

I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Life is about growth and change. When you are no longer doing that—that is your whisper; that is your whisper that you are supposed to do something else

Oprah Winfrey 

Have compassion for everyone you meet,
even if they don’t want it.
What appears bad manners, an ill temper
or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears
have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
down there where the spirit meets the bone.

Miller Williams

He had never told her certain things, about the women he received as part of the booty of battle, the women he met while he was travelling the world, the women who were expecting him to return one day. He hadn’t told her this because he was certain that she knew everything anyway and forgave him because he was her great love, and a great love is above the things of this world.

Brida, Paulo Coelho

The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That’s the only lasting thing you can create.

Chuck Palahniuk

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than the living size then they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.

Stephen King, Different Season

We enjoy warmth because we have been cold. We appreciate light because we have been in darkness. By the same token, we can experience joy because we have known sadness.

David Weatherford 

I have noticed that if you look carefully at people’s eyes the first five seconds they look at you, the truth of their feelings will shine through for just an instant before it flickers away.

“The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.

Maya Angelou

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

The very impulse to write, I think, springs from an inner chaos crying for order, for meaning, and that meaning must be discovered in the process of writing or the work lies dead as it is finished.

Arthur Miller

I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.

Scott Fitzgerald

The saddest part of a broken heart
Isn’t the ending so much as the start
The tragedy starts from the very first spark
Losing your mind for the sake of your heart

Let it die, Feist

Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

I believe in holding still. I believe that the secrets we hold in our hearts are our anchors, that even the unspoken between us is a measure of our every promise to the living and the dead. And all our promises, like all our hopes, move us through life with the power of an ocean liner pushing through the sea.

Bones by Fae Myenne Ng 

I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.

Sylvia Plath

Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

Elizabeth Kubler Ross

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken. 

Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist, there are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact.

  Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)

Such is our way of thinking - we find beauty not in the in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, the one thing against another creates.

Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows (1933)

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

Roald Dahl

We are at our sexiest when we feel the most confident. We are at our least attractive when we are sure of our inadequacies and practically cave in on ourselves to conceal them… We all handicap ourselves with insecurity, and it’s up to us to reset the self-worth scale and alter the message we sound out into the world… So how do we remind ourselves of our fabulousness without letting our self-doubt or the criticism of others drag us down? Triggers. We wear heels. We get waxed. We do things that make us attractive to ourselves and, therefore, able to allow others to do the same. And they work… Confidence is a state of mind, but sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to realize it. There is nothing wrong with embracing the tools that allow us to get there; heels, bikini waxes, whatever. As long as we’re aware of the fact that we are worth the same with or without these tools…

Olivia Wilde 

Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.

Victor Hugo

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.

Buddha

Art is the stored honey of the human soul.

Theodore Dreiser

Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.

Josephine Hart

…Your light is seen, your heart is known, your soul is cherished by more people than you might imagine…If you knew how many others have been touched in wonderful ways by you, you would be astonished. If you knew how many people feel so much for you, you would be shocked…You are far more wonderful than you think you are… Rest with that. Rest easy with that. Breathe again. You are doing fine. More than fine. Better than fine. You’re doin’ great. So relax. And love yourself today.

Neale Donald

Behind the hatred there lies a murderous desire for love.

Smiths 

Life is wonderful, so revel in its beauty. Be all you can be, and let go of the past. It is nothing but shadows.

Fell by David Clement-Davies

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

Mother Teresa

 

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

Maya Angelou

I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens, but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.

L.M. Montgomery

Acts of Service

Can vacuuming the floors really be an expression of love? Absolutely! Anything you do to ease the burden of responsibilities weighing on an “Acts of Service” person will speak volumes. The words he or she most want to hear: “Let me do that for you.” Laziness, broken commitments, and making more work for them tell speakers of this language their feelings don’t matter.

"It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle."