Pain says that if we’re alive enough to feel pain, we’re alive enough to feel joy. It’s just a question of whether we believe that there’s space for both.

To pretend is to do nothing more than imagine life as something wonderful so that we don’t have to incur the pain that it takes to actually make life wonderful.

God has hewn out a hidden path more glorious, tantalizing and adventuresome than the path trod by most, and it is a path seen only through the eyes of our wounds, felt solely through the heart of our losses, and singularly traversed by those with a limp in their step.

We grant that which is ‘right’ this impenetrable notion, that it will prevail even when the worst of life repeatedly comes crashing against it. And when that which is ‘right’ succumbs to the assaults of that which is not, we must remember that evil may have had its day, but it’s just a day.

The journey driven by the winds of greed are certain to run aground on the shoals of suffering.

If we’re running, the need to run has likely outweighed ample consideration of where we’re running to. Therefore, the goal is not a cherished destination for which we strive, but a panicked reaction for which we will suffer.

Don’t think for a minute that the person next to you is not as wounded as you are. For if you can’t see their wounds, it’s likely that you have not made it safe enough for them to show them to you because you don’t feel safe enough to risk them seeing yours.