Every creative person, and I think probably every other person, faces resistance when they are trying to create something good...The harder the resistance, the more important the task must be.

The mountains themselves call us into greater stories.

And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it.

I need for there to be something bigger than me. I need someone to put awe inside me; I need to come second to someone who has everything figured out.

If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, “Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.”

How disappointing would it be get to heaven and find out God created life to be enjoyed while all we did was worry?

We don't think much about how our love stories will affect the world, but they do. Children learn what's worth living for and what's worth dying for by the stories they watch us live. I want to teach our children how to get scary close, and more, how to be brave. I want to teach them that love is worth what it costs.