When you start to feel, do. When you start to feel scared because you don't have enough money, find someone to offer a little money. When you start to feel like you don't have enough love, find someone to offer love. When you feel unappreciated and unacknowledged, appreciate and acknowledge someone else in a concrete way. When you feel unlucky, order yourself to consider a blessing or two. Then find a tangible way to make today somebody else's lucky day. Thesestrategies help me sidestep wallowing every day. p. 30
Here's what I learned in the wake of my Lyme news: it's really hard to distinguish between a chute and a ladder. The days following my diagnosis were filled with little miracles. Maybe all my days are filled with little miracles, but I'm too distracted by what I think is my life to notice them. Sometimes bad news is the best way to see all the good quickly and clearly. Bad news has a way of waking us up, sort of like a glass of cold water in the face. We might prefer waking in a gentler way, but we can't argue with the efficiency of the cold water method... p. 37
My mother was equally devastated--so devastated, in fact, that it was hard for her to let it be as awful as it was. She was hopeful. She had to be, because allowing it to really sink in, accepting that there was no way out of the pain that her baby girl was going through, no matter how much "hope" we directed her way, was unfathomable. So she said things that occasionally made Sister feel that she was being pushed through her grief too fast.
I learned that in these disasters, all we can do is tell our ____ that their grief is real, and if it lasts forever, then we will grieve with them forever.
As far as I was able to tell during those two years, there was nothing else worth saying. It was not going to be all right, ever. Everything doesn't happen for a decent reason. I couldn't do anything at all except feed her, hold her when she cried, pray angry prayers, keep showing up, and hope that time and my home and presence would offer healing. p. 43
If...you are called upon, keep being who you have always been. Do what you've always done. There is a reason your friend chose you for that rose, so don't freeze. Keep moving. Trust your instincts.
Go to her. Don't call first, because she won't know she wants you there untill you arrive and sit down. Don't ask, "What can I do?" She doesn't know. Just do something. When you go to her house bring a movie in case she doesn't want to talk. If she does want to talk, avoid saying things to diminish or explain away her pain, like, "Everything happens for a reason," or "Time heals all wounds," or "God gives us only what we can handle." These are things people say when they don't know what else to say, and even if they're true, they're better left unsaid because they can be discovered only in retrospect. When her pain is fresh and new, let her have it. Don't try to take it away. Forgive yourself for not having that power. Grief and pain are like joy and peace; they are not things we should try to snatch from each other. They're sacred. They are part of each person's journey. All we can do is offer relief from this fear: I am alone. That's the one fear you can alleviate. Offer your presence, your love, yourself, so she'll understand that no matter how dark it gets, she's not walking alone. That is always enough to offer, Thank God.
Grief is not something to be fixed. It's something to be borne, together. And when the time is right, there is always something that is born from it. After real grief, we are reborn as people with wider and deeper vision and greater compassion for the pain of others. We know that. So through our friend's grief, we maintain in our hearts the hope that in the end, good will come of it. But we don't say that to our friend. We let our friend discover that on her own. hope is a door each one must open for herself... p. 49-50
We're not often permitted to tell the truth in everyday life. There is a small set of words and reactions and pleasantries we are allowed to say, like, "I'm fine, and you"? But we are not supposed to say much of anything else, especially how we are really doing. We find out early that telling the wole truth makes people uncomfortalbe and is certainly not ladylike or liketly ot make us popular, so we learn to lie sweetly so we can be loved. And when we figure out this system, we are split in two: the public self, who says the right things in order to belong, and the secret self, who thinks other things. p. 51
Happiness is low expectations paired with a short-term memory problem. p. 72
Repentance is a fancy word used often in Christian circles. I don't use fancy religious words, because I don't think they explain themselves well. Also, fancy language tends to make in people feel more in and out people feel more out, and I don't think that's how words are best used. Words are best used to describe specific feelings, ideas, and hearts as clearly as possible, to make the speaker and the listener, or the writer adn the reader, feel less alone and more hopeful.
I used to be annoyed and threatened by the word repentance, until I figured out what it really means to me. Repentance is the magical moment when a sliver of light finds it's way into a place of darkness in my heart, and I'm able to see clearly how my jerkiness is keeping me from peace and joy in a specific area of my life.
I don't believe in advice. Everybody has the asnwers right inside her, since we're all made up of the same amount of God. So when a friend says, "I need some advice, I switch it to, I need some love, and I try to offer that. Offering love usually looks like being quiet, listening hard, and letting my friend talk until she discovers that she already has the answers. p. 117
Forgive yourself.
It's not a once-and-for-all thing, self-forgiveness. It's more like a constant attitude. It's just being hopeful. It's refusing to hold your breath. It's loving yourself enough to offer yourself a million more tries. It's what we want our kids to do every day for their whole lives, right? We want them to embrace being human instead of fighting against it. We want them to offer themselves grace. Forgiveness and grace are like oxygen: we can't offer it to others unless we put on our masks first. We have to put our grace masks on and breathe in deep. We have to show them how it's done. We need to love ourselves if we want our kids to love themselves. We don't necessarily have to love them more; we have to love ourselves more. We have to be gentle with ourselves. We have to forgive ourselves and then...oh my goodness...find ourselves sort of awesome, actually... p. 118-119
I wanted to badly to tell Chase that it was ok, that we would replace Jacob with a new fish, a bigger fish, a whole school of fish, but I didn't. This was his first experience with death, and I wouldn't suggest to him that death can be cheated through replacement. I wouldn't teach him that pain should be avoided, dodged, or danced around. He needed to learn that death is worthy of grief because it's final, for now. p. 146
When he asked me, Why Mom? Why does God send us here, where things hurt so much? Why does he make us love things that he knows we're going to lose? I told him that we don't love people and animals because we will have them forever; we love them because loving them changes us, makes us better, healthier, kinder, realer. Loving people and animals makes us stronger in the right ways and weaker in the right ways. Even if animals and people leave, even if they die, they leave us better. So we keep loving, even though we might lose, because loving teaches us and changes us. And that's what we're here to do. God sends us here to learn how to be better lovers, and to learn how to be loved, so we'll be prepared for heaven.
The only thing [your] gift needs to do is bring you joy. You must find the thing that brings you joy in the doing of that thing, and not worry about the outcome. Your gift might be crucial and obviously helpful...or it might be odd and unique.
...You will know your gift because it will bring you joy and satisfaction, even if it's hard for you to do. You will go about using your gift quietly, and eventually someone might notice and ask you to hare your gift. If you agree to share, your gift will become a bridge...I think it's pretty hard to keep a gift from becoming a bridge, somehow, someday, someway--if we use it. Because I think God must really want us to connect with each other. He must want us to become a part of each other's lives and memories, and he must want our hearts to get all tangled up with other hearts. We are each an island, but he gives us gifts to use as bridges into each other's lives. When we lay down our gift, we walk right over it and straight into another heart. p. 210-211
...I learned to just let feelings be--because eventually they pass. I learned that all thigns pass; that life is hard to endure but not impossible. I discovered that after enduring, if you choose not to run away, there are prizes. Those prizes are wisdom and dignity. I learned that Love and I, We could do hard things. p. 250
