Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.

You don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?

And that was the greatest heartbreak of all- no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are bound to disappoint. As it turns out, kids are more like us than we think: damaged, through and through.

Stem cell research has become such a polarizing issue in America... and I wanted to bring it down to the personal level, instead of the political.

I knew that somewhere God was laughing. He had taken the other half of my heart, the one person who knew me better than I knew myself, and He had done what nothing else could do. By bringing us together, He had set into motion the one thing that could tear us apart.

Sometimes there aren't words. The silence between us is flung wide as an ocean. But I manage to reach across it, to wrap my arms around him.

You may be real, but you're still stuck in a book.