I look back now and realize that the gift of a true friend is that she sees you not the way you see yourself or the way others see you. A true friend sees you for who you are and who you can become.

We all need to have dreams. The question is, does the dream control you or do you control the dream?

Christy: "My grandma made this. I've had it since elementary school." Todd: "I never knew that." Christy: "I never knew you left your towel on the floor." Todd: "Uh-oh. Is this one of those issues they talked about in our premarital counseling? Should I hang up towels so you feel more loved?

In the pit of her stomach she realized that everything she raged against on Saturday night-- the restrictions, rules, and guidelines-- was born of an ancient fervor. Every rule ever established, from the beginning of time, invited mutiny.

It's funny whom we end up choosing to love and who ends up choosing to love us. It's rarely the people we think it should be.

For many years, Sierra had compared the Holy Spirit to the wind, as it said the the Bible, noting that it was always there, no matter how faint the breeze. The wind went where it wanted to go, and its path was easy to detect because it moved objects and people. But no one had ever seen the wind.

When I was little, I used to think that the sky at night was a big, black blanket that separated heaven from earth, and the stars were a whole bunch of little pin holes that the angels poked in the blanket so they could look down on us.