“I imagine that she too had to remind herself that it wasn’t all dirty nappies, dirty dishes, dirty floors, fingers, and faces. That somewhere in the mundaneness of it all the work of God was happening. That somewhere in her offering of home, food, learning, and love there was something that would come close to the divinity within him. That somehow in all her mortal weakness there would be something that would help him in the work he would someday perform.”
“Because feeling weak is just an idea,
Like worry, or fear, or hope.
And ideas can change
The course of history,
And my own mind.
So while I breathe
And while I stand
Upon the ground instead of lie within it,
I’ll earn that obituary.”
“The name she goes by in each part of our family doesn’t seem to matter much; it is what the name has come to mean that has made all the difference. “
I picked up my fork and went to work beside him on the hillside, blood and sweat mingling under the Midwestern sun. He smiled at me and threw another thistle. “Farms and people need caretakers,” He said.
“I want to earn my eulogy. So someday in my children’s past, They’ll remember me as I wished I could be.”
“There’s another element, a base that underpins the actions, which is proving more and more to be the secret to happiness. And it’s not something you do so much as it is how you see the world.”
ShareLittle Ethel: A Christmas Story of Faith and Family (From the book “Walking […]
“Gratitude doesn’t change our problems, it changes our perspective on our problems. God didn’t just want gratitude FROM me, He wanted gratitude FOR me, because He knew that living in gratitude is how I could get through difficult times, painful experiences, and transform sorrow into personal growth.”
To color his barrier to success and wealth With the threat of death.
To throw down his worst and call it my best. To claim equal if I Step down where he stands. Beneath me where he lives, Outside of Eden, That lone, cold man.