Waiting is the hardest work of hope.

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.

The secret of grace is that it can be all right at the center even when it is all wrong on the edges.

We feel properly embarrassed when we are caught doing something that makes us look inept, knuckleheaded, or inappropriate. Maybe the difference is this: we feel embarrassed because we look bad, and we feel shame because we think we are bad. When we are embarrassed, we feel socially foolish. When we are shamed, we feel morally unworthy.

My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed - and each of the five has been me.

Can you stop your memory on a dime, put it in reverse, and spin it in another direction the way you can reverse direction on a tape recorder? We cannot forget on command. So we just have to let the forgetting happen as it will; we shouldn't rush it, and we certainly should not doubt the genuineness of our forgiving if we happen to remember. The really important thing is that we have the power to forgive what we still do remember.

Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory.