Quotable

Running with last nights theme of lyrics, I decided to capture myself in quotes. Yes, myself, not my current life experience, just me. This is more for my own enjoyment than for anyone reading this blog (I'm perplexed that people would read my blog, other than Katie, Jen and Heather). Here are my thoughts:

On what real strength is:
A strong woman has faith that she is strong enough for the journey, but a woman of strength has faith that it is in the journey that she will become strong. - anonymous

On my heart:
Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation. - Psalm 25:5

On truth that is often to too for my head to grasp:
We could almost say He sees because He loves, and therefore loves although He sees. - C.S. Lewis

On growth:
Then the time came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. - Anais Nin

On the condition of my heart:
Do I wish to turn back? O Lord, to whom should I go? In all the world, I have no one but you. Help me to follow you, even thought it seems impossible. Help me to trust you as much as I long to love you. - Much Afraid, "Hinds Feet on High Places", by Hannah Hurnard

On how love really works:
Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into ones life with pomp and blare, like a knight riding down; perhaps it crept to ones side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages, betrayed the rythem and the music, perhaps, perhaps love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a gold-hearted rose slipping from it's green sheath. - Lucy Maude Montgomery

On my goals:
Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. - 2 Corinthians 5:9

On doing things the easy way:
To fall is easy. Even so, falling will not help us. - Alice Walker

On life:
Does the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend. - "Up Hill", by Christina Rossetti

On trying to figure things out for yourself, rather than trusting God:
Now who's trying to look down future roads? Too many side streets, too many branch offs. Forks lead to forks lead to forks. It doesn't do to wonder. Just do. - Ariel, "Ariel", by Steven Boyett

On real feminine beauty:
A woman of true beauty is a woman who is in the depths of her soul at rest, trusting God because she has come to know Him to be worthy of her trust. - anonymous

On frustration/waiting:
God is always present, despite my circumstances, and the seasons that feel the most chilly are most likely preparing me for the growth that comes with new beginnings. - Nicole Nordeman

On the sanctifying power of love:
Love is beautiful, but it is also terrible - terrible in it's determination to allow nothing belmished or unworthy to remain in the beloved. - the Shepherd, "Hinds Feet on High places", by Hannah Hurnard

On being alive, vs being concious:
The heart lives in the far more bloody and magnificent realities of living and dying and loving and hating. That's why those who live from their minds are detached from life. Things don't seem to touch them very much, they puzzle at the way otherss are affected by life and they conclude others are emotional and unstable. - John Eldridge, "Waking the Dead"

Also on true strength:
Tenderness and kindness are not the signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution. - Kahil Gibran

Also on waiting, especially when life is hard:
Be glad for all God is planning for you. Be patient in trouble and prayerful always. - Romans 12:12

On living the way we were meant to live:
Heroes know that things must happen when it is time for them to happen. A quest may not simply be abandoned, things may be unresolved for a long time, but not forever. A happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story. - Prince Lir, "The Last Unicorn"

On being alive:
The real joy of life is play. Play is anything we do for the joy and love of doing it, it is the real living of life. - Walter Rauschenbusch

On faith:
Following Jesus it turns out, is not a one time spectacular act of faith, but a one-day-at-a-time, ordinary, unspectacular following - a daily act of fearlessness that takes us through the most frightening and rugged terrain to a place of peace, joy and abandon. - Michael Yaconelli

On the point of life:
When you fully comprehend that there is more to life than just here and now, and you realize your life is just preperation for eternity, you will begin to live differently. - Rick Warren

On perspective (and trusting God):
The death of God himself on the cross - at the time nobody saw how anything good could ever result from this tragedy. And yet God forsaw that the result would be the opening of heaven to human beings. So the worst tragedy in history brought about the most glorious event in history. - Peter Kreeft

On learning obedience (a lifelong process):
I was born with a wayward heart, still I live with a restless spirit. My soul is so well worn you'd think I'd have arrived by now, I'm caught in the trappings of my search for an everlasting love - I've made mistakes enough to last me a lifetime. I still slip, I still fall, but I'll always run back to you. - Avalon

On Jesus:
Jesus Christ didn't come into this world to make bad people good. He came to make dead people alive. - Ravi Zacherias

On the Bible:
I'd give the benefit of the doubt to the Bible because of the 800 allegations I've studied I haven't found one single area in the Bible of error, but I've found a lot of error on the part of the critics. - Norman Geisler

On this world in which we live:
It said the world was a wild, strange place, unbelievable, absurd if you wished, but all in all, quite a place. - Ray Bradbury

On moving on:
What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entertaining a new land. - Ernesto Guevarra de la Serna

On life, real life, and faith:
Risk, as we have seen it, is indespensable to any significant life, nowhere more clearly than in the life of the spirit. The goal of faith is not to create a set of immutable, rationalized, precisely defined and defendable believes to preserve forever. It is to recover a relationship with God. - Dan Taylor

On what it means to be a Christian:
Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of the mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God and not in God himself. - Madeleine L'Engle

The last two quotes are extraordinarily appropriate to my life right now, as I wrestle with spiritual growing pains. I'm glad God loves me enough to change me, I'm even MORE glad I can rely on His grace throughout the good times and the bad and the keenly difficult growth periods.