Like faith, marriage is a mystery. The person you're committed to spending your life with is known and yet unknown, at the same time remarkably intimate and necessarily other. The classic seven-year itch may not be a case of familiarity breeding ennui and contempt, but the shock of having someone you thought you knew all too well suddenly seem a stranger. When that happens, you are compelled to either recommit to the relationship or get the hell out. There are many such times in a marriage.

Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found.

But it is daily tasks, daily acts of love and worship that serve to remind us that the religion is not strictly an intellectual pursuit, and these days it is easy to lose sight of that as, like our society itself, churches are becoming more politicized and polarized. Christian faith is a way of life, not an impregnable fortress made up of ideas; not a philosophy; not a grocery list of beliefs.

Changing husbands is only changing troubles.

One may have been a fool, but there's no foolishness like being bitter.

We can't give our children the future, strive though we may to make it secure. But we can give them the present.

But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion.