God expects you to have enough faith and determination and enough trust in Him to keep moving, keep living, keep rejoicing. In fact, He expects you not simply to face the future (that sounds pretty grim and stoic); He expects you to embrace and shape the future--to love it and rejoice in it and delight in your opportunities. God is anxiously waiting for the chance to answer your prayers and fulfill your dreams, just as He always has. But He can't if you don't pray, and He can't if you don't dream. In short, He can't if you don't believe.

I suppose it goes without saying that negative speaking so often flows from negative thinking about ourselves. We see our own faults, we speak--or at least think--critically of ourselves, and before long that is how we see everyone and everything. No sunshine, no roses, no promise of hope or happiness. Before long we and everybody around us are miserable.

If you try your best to be the best parent you can be, you will have done all that a human being can do and all that God expects you to do.

I testify of the renewing power of God's love and the miracle of His grace. His concern is for the faith at which you finally arrive, not the hour of the day in which you got there.

Don't hyperventilate about something that happened at 9:00 in the morning when the grace of God is trying to reward you at 6:00 in the evening.

Think the best of each other, especially of those you say you love. Assume the good and doubt the bad.

Everything in the gospel teaches us that we can change if we need to, that we can be helped if we truly want it, that we can be made whole, whatever the problems of the past.