When I write, I can see things that I can't otherwise see, and I feel things that I can't otherwise feel.

What writing teaches me, over and over, is that God is waiting to be found everywhere, in the darkest corners of our lives, the dead ends and bad neighborhoods we wake up in, and in the simplest, lightest, most singular and luminous moments. He's hiding, like a child, in quite obvious and visible places, because he wants to be found. The miracle is that he dwells in both.

Life sneaks up on us every once in a while and gives us something we didn't ever know we wanted, and lights within us a love we didn't even know existed.

The grandest seduction of all is the myth that DOING EVERYTHING BETTER gets us where we want to be. It gets us somewhere, certainly, but not anywhere worth being.

I didn’t ask you to become new and improved today. That wasn’t the goal. You were broken down and strange yesterday, and you still are today, and the only one freaked out about it is you.

My Mom and Dad and brother have grown through the years into my closest friends, the people who tell me the most searing truth, who give me soft places to rest and present to me a bright future when the only one I can see from my vantage point is dim and breaking before my eyes.