So much of young adult literature has turned dark, almost pathological. It's almost as if there is a race to see who can be the most dysfunctional.

I am a believer in angels, though not the picture-book kind with wings and harps. Such angelic accoutrements seem as nonsensical to me as devils sporting horns and carrying pitchforks. To me, angel wings are merely symbolic of their role as divine messengers.

I am facing the most difficult thing of my life, my own greatest failure.

Small kindnesses often, unintentionally, produce the biggest payoffs.

Rarely do we invest the time to open the book of another's life. When we do, we are usually surprised to find its cover so misleading and its reviews so flawed.

I have come to believe that we do not walk alone in this life. There are others, fellow sojourners, whose journeys are interwoven with ours in seemingly random patterns, yet, in the end, have been carefully placed to reveal a remarkable tapestry. I believe God is the weaver at that loom.

It's been said that every new beginning in some other beginning's end.