If I had the perspective of the whole, perhaps I'd see it? That which seems evil, is it a cloud to bring rain, to bring a greater good to the whole of the world? Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perseverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?

No one told me that it would all happen at the same hallowed time: Mothering is at once the hardest and the holiest and the happiest.

Manna today or I starve.

Love doesn't necessarily mean bless or agree with, it means sacrifice for and suffer with.

Every time I surrender to stress, aren’t I advertising the unreliability of God?

The prayers we weave into the matching of socks, the stirring of oatmeal, the reading of stories, they survive fire.

I have to seek God beauty. Because isn't my internal circuitry wired to seek out something worthy of worship? . True Beauty worship, worship of Creator Beauty Himself. God is present in all moments, but I do not deify the wind in the pines, the snow falling on the hemlocks, the moon over harvested wheat. Pantheism, seeing the natural world as divine, is a very different thing than seeing divine God present in all things . Nature is not God but God revealing the weight of Himself, all His glory, through the looking glass of nature.