Go on, glare your eyes at me, and cry and plead, and talk tome about money and what it can buy. But it can't buy back a child once he's dead!

I used to have this toy, a magic slate. You wrote or drew on it and then, just by pulling up the plastic cover, everything you did disappeared and you could start new. Maybe everyone feels that on New Year's Eve: They can pull up the magic sheet and rewrite their lives.

From this day forward, I vowedto myself, I was in control of my life. Not fate, notGod, not even Chris was ever again going to tell me what to do, ordominate me in any way. From this day forward, I was my own person, totake what I would, when I would, and I would answer only to myself.

God, He didn't write the scripts for the puny little players downhere.We wrote them ourselves-with each day we lived, each word we spoke,each thought we etched on our brains. And Momma had written herscript, too.And a sorry one it was.

When do we find out?" I asked him, my tears now bubbling at the lids."Find out what?""Who we are." "We're always making discoveries about that," he said. (pg. 260)

We're better off not worrying about ourselves, and to do that, we have to worry about others.

That's the way all life's battles are won.. You don't look at the overall picture. You take one step, then another, and another... until you arrive at your destination.