Grace is when you know you're loved exactly as you are.

This breath, and this moment, and this life is a gift and we are all in this together. We all have countless choices every day to close down or stand up straight and open up, and take a big breath and say YES to the gift.

Our tendency in the midst of suffering is to turn on God. To get angry and bitter and shake our fist at the sky and say, "God, you don't know what it's like! You don't understand! You have no idea what I'm going through. You don't have a clue how much this hurts." The cross is God's way of taking away all of our accusations, excuses, and arguments. The cross is God taking on flesh and blood and saying, "Me too.

We need a childlike trust that God is good... ultimately we are OK. That is a simple, beautiful pure thing that can be complicated ferociously by all sorts of intellectual categories.

So this is reality, this forgiveness, this reconciliation, is true for everybody. Paul insisted that when Jesus died on the cross, he was reconciling "all things, in heaven and on earth, to God." All things, everywhere. ...This reality then isn't something we make come true about ourselves by doing something. It is already true. Our choice is to live in this new reality or cling to a reality of our own making.

I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it's a man and woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man.

For many, 'desire' is a bad word, something we're supposed to 'give up for God.' That kind of thinking can be really destructive because it teaches people to deny their hearts, their true selves.