Mary E. DeMuth

Growth comes from God, to those with surrendered, yielded hearts.

Because the culture we breathe and work in rushes against rest. It equates our worth with production and wealth and fame. The more we work toward those goals, the more society assigns us worth.

We don__ like death. We__ rather produce seeds another way. But death to ourselves, our agendas, our expectations, our hopes is necessary to find deep joy that comes when we fully relinquish ourselves to the gospel.

The roadblocks to growth and joy come when we forget the bigness of God & instead make people bigger than He is.

We cannot love our enemies until we see those twin truths: God loves me. God loves them.

When God wants to do an impossible task, He takes an impossible person and breaks her.

I realized that what I feared the most had materialized, yet I survived.

It__ never easy letting go. But if we don__ learn the art of relinquishment, we__l never move forward to embrace the new relationships God has for us.

We cannot let the haters of this world define us. Or frighten us into no longer being ourselves.

Sometimes we control our family members because we idolize and idealize our perfect plan over the journey that God has laid out for them. (p. 56)

Control is the inner disease of those who need stability and order to function.

I wear the word victim like a badge of honor _ my own purple heart. I see what others do more than I see what I'm capable of.

Why must we cling to those who walk away instead of granting freedom? We must give the same liberty God gives to prodigals-an ability to let them go-or we'll be perennially bound to others for our happiness and effective service.

The Gospel isn__ a life management program. It shouldn__ merely be the crutch we fall on when life gets ugly. It should be the legs we walk on, the air we breathe.

God's heart_is not that we escape our lot, but that we learn to thrive in the midst of it.

It__ an act of our will to choose to see people simply as wildly loved by God, to assume their beauty before guessing their depravity.

Worry is a weighty monster with poisoned tentacles. It clutches at us, grabs at our minds, steals our breath, our will. It lurks. It pounces. It colors how we perceive the world.

With an all-or-nothing mind-set, you tend to judge yourself relentlessly_Eeyore becomes your best friend.