Anna White

All of my secrets and scars and wishes and dreams can live together in this one body without shame, without blame, and without fear. I am all loved, all accepted, and all in service to God. In his eyes, regardless of what I did or didn__ do today, I am loved. I am His, so I am enough.

I doubt that anyone has a Damascus moment after experiencing discrimination. Most people seem to have shining moments of change after experiencing grace.

A basic reality of life is that we all struggle. We hurt and have hurt other people. We all feel lost sometimes. This isn__ all we are, but it is a part of who we are. The only question I have when I__ with someone is, __an they admit it? And will they let me admit it too?

I love that there's no cutoff where we get labeled and sent off to a home for hopeless, cranky, depressives. Every day is a new chance to listen longer and be braver and love more. We get to try again and again and again.

Being broken isn't the worst thing. We can be mended and put together again. We don__ have to be ashamed of our past. We can embrace the history that gives us value, and see our cracks as beautiful.

I think this is the essence of life: to be willing circle back, to fall in deeper, to relearn what I thought I already knew.

I believe in beauty. I believe in goodness. I believe in the power of turning: the other cheek, time, curve of the earth.

Acts of love, for me, are leaps of bravery.

I want to share my story, and I want to know yours. I believe with all my heart that sharing our stories, the real, ugly, broken ones, is one of the most powerful things in the world, because to share our story we must first accept it. We must own it. We must stop running from it or shoving it into the corner when company comes over. To share our story is to admit that we've been changed.

The idea of practicing love is deeply appealing to me, because built right in is an acceptance of imperfection. There is an acknowledgment to myself that I am going to mess this up, an understanding that there is room to grow. Each of my failures just affirms the truth that we are all starting over and rising again.

I realized that I was okay with myself. I was quirky and withdrawn and loud, but I liked that. I smiled at strangers without thinking they were going to attack me and drag me into their cars. I went to doctors_ offices and touched magazines that had been touched by sick people.

Love has no demand of us but to keep practicing, to do the next hard thing. Love says, Come dear. Take the next step.

I want my heart to be the thin place. I don't want to board a plane to feel the kiss of heaven. I want to carry it with me wherever I go. I want my fragile, hurting heart, to recognize fleeting kairos, eternal moments as they pass. I want to be my own mountain and my own retreat.

It is a beautiful and scary thing to sit open-handed and let all your plans float away like dust.

I've always let my imagination run free, but now I try to rein it in. Things never turn out the way I imagine, so I am letting them rest. Instead, I am holding just what is in my hand.

The God I serve is able to save us both. To give us the winning lottery ticket so all our money problems will go away. To mend our broken hearts. To bring us close to those we love. He is able. He is able. He is able.But even if He doesn__, do not bow to bitterness. Do not fall down onto your broken pieces and let them cut you to ribbons. Even if He doesn__ do all that He is able to do, all that we wish He would do, He is good.

The griefs that have been hardest for me were the ones I didn__ recognize as griefs, because they came in what were supposed to be the best times of my life. No one whispered in my ear that the best times, the ones that change our lives, are woven with the thread of loss.

Christmas is such a time of struggle anyway, crammed with busy and hurry and the expectation that you will be joyful, no matter what. Then, if you__e like me, when you just sit quietly, just be, and let yourself feel what you feel, the guilt creeps in. Because you__e alive and the world is big, and you should be feeling some freakin_ Christmas spirit.