every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world—that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimatesecrets of your marriage.

When it comes to women, get your life together first. Put on your own oxygen mask first. Figure out who you are. Mature. And then go find somebody to share that life with.

If I'm being forgiving of myself, I could say I'm somebody who was really hungry for experiences. The same thing that would make me go try to be a trail cook on a ranch was the same thing that would make me want to have sex with a couple cowboys while I was there.

Watch for the people whose eyes light up when you talk about your dream. Those are the people you keep.

I completely respect the ways people are bound in the lives that they have, whether it's because of forces outside of their control or choices that they've made that they want to honor with their own responsibilities and obligations - taking care of people around them or being a part of a community, or their work.

Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years--I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.

Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I'm aiming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift.