One day I will have to forgive life for ending, I tell myself. I will have to learn how to let life be life with its unbearable finality ... just be what it is.

Everybody needs a seashell in her bathroom to remind her the ocean is her home.

The only wrong thing, perhaps, is permanently hesitating on the verge of courage.

God is at the tip of our scalpels, our screwdrivers, our computer terminals, our dust rags, our vacuum cleaners, our pencils and pens. He is with us in our wheelchairs, or on our hospital beds, when all we can do is sit or lie flat. When we envision Him and His purpose in what we do, then we begin to grow aware of His presence in the middle of it. We are able to engage in our inward conversation with Him as we work, naturally, without strain. He becomes our partner, our collaborator.

One day I will have to forgive life for ending, I tell myself. I will have to learn how to let life be life with its unbearable finality ... just be what it is.

A moment of grace. There rose up within me a profound sense of being loved. I felt "gathered together" and encircled by a Presence completely loving, as if I were enveloped by the music of a love song created just for me. It was not overwhelming or even emotional. Just a warm knowing that I was in God's loving embrace...centered and unified there. [Love]encounters cannot be analyzed, only shared. If you take a butterfly, Robert Frost said, and pin it down into a box, you no longer have a butterfly.

I think many people need, even require, a narrative version of their life. I seem to be one of them. Writing memoir is, in some ways, a work of wholeness.