"Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perserverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?"

"Satan prowls but he's a lion on a leash."

"Eucharisteo-thanksgiving-always precedes the miracle."

"A simplified Christmas isn't about circumstances as much as it is about focus."

"Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering the converse does. The brave who focus and all things good and all things beautiful to give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agent to bring the fullest night to all the world."

"It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us..."

"Simplicity is ultimately a matter of focus."

"God holds us in the untamed moments too."

"I am blessed. I can bless."

"I think the fall in Eden was ultimately a failure to give thanks."

"The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world."

"When we stop fearing failure, we start being artists."

"All those years thinking I was saved and had said my yes to God, but was really living the no."

"I am a mother-tired, but when my soul doth magnify, my time doth magnify."

"Christian hands never claspand He doesn't give gifts for gainbecause a gift can never stop being a gift - it is always meant to be given."

"How can I help this son of mine see when I can't see? The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they've held their own peace?"

"Be radical about grace and relentless about truth and resolute about holiness."

"True saints know that the place where all the joy comes from is far deeper than that of feelings, joy comes from the place of the very presence of God. Joy is God and God is joy and joy doesn't negate all other emotions - joy transcends all other emotions."

"Gratitude for the seemingly insignificant-a seed-this plants the giant miracle."

"Thanksgiving-giving thanks in everything-prepares the way that God might show us His fullest salvation in Christ."

"Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love?"

"The joy of small that makes life large."

"They say time is money, but that's not true. Time is life. And if I want the fullest life, I need to find fullest time... the busyness of your life leaving little room for the source of your life...God gives us time. And who has time for God?Which makes no sense."

"Eucharisteo, remembering with thanks, this is the bread. We take the moments as bread and give thanks and the thanks itself becomes bread. The thanks itself nourishes. Thanks feeds our trust...Manna with thanks, eat the mystery of the moment with trust, and am nourished another day - or refuse it... and die. Jesus calls us to surrender and there's nothing like releasing fears and falling into peace. This is what I have always wanted and never knew: this utter trust, this enlivening fall of surrender into the safe hands. There is no joy without trust!"

"To get where you want to go, the first question you always have to answer is Where am I? ... We only find out where we are when we find out where He is. We only find ourselves... when we find Him."

"We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace."

"We 'have' all received on grace after another, but we only recognize the glory of God in this moment 'when we wake to the one grace after another'."

"Here I can become the blessing, a little life that multiplies joy, making the larger world a better place.God can enter into me, even me, and use these hands, these feet, to be His love, a love that goes on and on and on forever, endless cycle of grace."

"Sometimes you don't know when you're taking the first step through a door until you're already inside."

"Why do I lunge for control instead of joy?...do I thin Jesus grace too impotent to give me the full life...Whenever I am blind to joys well, isn't it because I don't believe in Gods care?"

"At the last, this is what will determine a fulfilling, meaningful life, a life that, behind all the facades, every one of us longs to live: gratitude for the blessings that expresses itself by becoming the blessing."

"Hurry always empties a soul."

"The real problem of life is never a lack of time. The real problem of life - in my life - is lack of thanksgiving."

"Get this, kids - how a man proposes isn't what makes him romantic. It's how a man purposes to lay down his life that makes him romantic."

"How my eyes see, perspective, is my key to enter into His gates. I can only do so with thanksgiving. If my inner eye has God seeping up through all things, then can't I give thanks for anything? And if I can give thanks for the good things, the hard things, the absolute everything, I can enter the gates to glory. Living in His presence is fullness of joy- and seeing shows the way in."

"Without God's Word as a lens, the world warps."

"If the heights of our joy are measured by the depths of our gratitude, and gratitude is but a way of seeing, a spiritual perspective of smallness might offer a vital way of seeing especially conducive to gratitude."

"That is what a shadow is, and empty space, a hole in the light. Evil is this - a hole in the goodness of God."

"The mind would rather fret about the future or pine over the past - so the mind can cling to its own illusion of control. But the current moment? It cannot be controlled. And what a mind can't control, it tends to discount. Brush past ... over. It's the battle plan of the enemy of the soul - to keep us blind to this current moment, the one we can't control, to keep us blind to Him, the One who controls everything."

"I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives."

"When we lay the soil of our hard lives opened the rain of grace and let Joy permeate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? for us? The clouds open when we mouth thanks."

"This day is not a sieve, losing time. With each passing minute, each passing year, there's this deepening awareness that I am filling, gaining time. We stand on the brink of eternity."

"I hunger for filling in a world that is starved."

"Long, I am woman who speaks but one language, the language of the fall--discontentment and self-condemnation, the critical eye and the never satisfied."

"The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they've held their own peace?"

"Communion, by necessity, always leads us into community."

"When bridges seem to give way, we fall into Christ's safe arms, true bridge, and not into hopelessness. It is safe to trust! We can be too weak to go on because His strength is made perfect in utter brokenness and nail-pierced hands help up. It is safe to trust! We can give thanks in everything because there's a good God leading, working all things into good. It is safe to trust! The million bridges behind us may seem flattened to the earthly eye, but all bridges ultimately hold, fastened by nails. It is safe to trust."

"I am a hunter of beauty and I move slow and I keep the eyes wide, every fiber of every muscle sensing all wonder and this is the thrill of the hunt and I could be an expert on the life full, the beauty meat that lurks in every moment.I hunger to taste life.God."

"Awe ignites joy because it makes us bend the knee."

"The true Love Dare. To move into His presence and listen to His love unending and know the grace uncontainable. This is the vault of the miracles. The only thing that can change us, the world, is this- all His love."