Getting to a higher spiritual level is like increasing your credit score. You get a lot more points for sinning and repenting than if you have no credit history at all.

I understood finally that the thing I should have feared most was not loss, but never loving. The price for safety was the regret I felt at this moment. And yet I would have to live with it for the rest of my life

As it turned out, Welcome was where I lost everything, and gained everything. Welcome was the place where my life was guided from one track to another, ending me to places I'd never thought of going.

Please come to me, Cat, because there's no surviving you. You don't have to love me back. You don't have to be mine. Just let me be yours.

But when you started dating someone, you could never be sure what you were getting into. You had to give someone a chance to show you who he really was . . . and believe him when he did.

Was parenting ever going to get easier? Did you ever reach a point where you could stop worrying?

I grew up being very shy, very much a bookworm, and I remember desperately wondering how to be accepted by the popular kids.