friendships

When you invite people to share in your miracle, you create future allies during rough weather.

Love without humility results in the inclination to act as everyone's parent, humility without love results in the need to be everyone's child, and love with humility results in the desire to be a friend.

Through Jiu Jitsu I have developed many of the most meaningful relationships in my life, and if that were the only benefit of my practice, Jiu Jitsu would still be the best endeavor I have ever undertaken.

One of my favorite things: good conversation with good friends.

Funny how things work themselves out. Things happen that split up family and friends, then things happen that bring them back together. Everyone is in your life for a reason. My hope is for all the reasons to be good. Those who love you never lose touch, are always consistent, and unquestionable.

Hang in. We__l make it. We all have each other.

If you never learned to hold onto someone, how could it possibly hurt now to let them go?

...I also have an extended family. The people who stayed. The people who became more than friends; the people who open the door when I knock. That's what it all boils down to. The people who have to open the door, not because they always want to but because they do.

Sometimes the bridges you burn light the way out of your darkness, but the memory of the blaze will be burned into your heart and mind forever.

True love is not a hide and seek game: in true love, both lovers seek each other.

Money cannot buy friendship.

Everyone wants to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

She was clean": no piercings, tattoos, or scarifications. All the kids were now. And who could blame them, Alex thought, after watching three generations of flaccid tattoos droop like moth-eaten upholstery over poorly stuffed biceps and saggy asses?

Sometimes, we expect life to work a certain way and when it doesn__ we blame others or see it as a sign, rather than face the pain of the choices we should or shouldn__ have made. Real healing won__ begin until we stop saying, __od prevented this or that._ Often in our attempt to protect ourselves from pain, we leave things to fate and don__ take chances. Or, we don__ work hard enough to keep the blessings we are given. Maybe, we didn't recognize a blessing, until it was too late. Often, it is the lies we tell ourselves that keeps us stuck in a delusion of not being responsible for our lives. We leave it all up to God. The truth is we are not leaves blowing toward our destiny without any control. To believe this is to take away our freedom of choice and that of others. The final stage of grief is acceptance. This can__ be reached through always believing God willed the outcomes in our lives, despite our inaction or actions. To think so is to take the easy escape from our accountability. Sometimes, God has nothing to do with it. Sometimes, we just screwed up and guarded our heart from accepting it, by putting our outcome on God as the reason it turned out the way it did. Faith is a beautiful thing, but without work we can give into a mysticism of destiny that really doesn't teach us lessons or consequences for our actions. Life then becomes a distorted delusion of no accountability with God always to blame for battles we walked away from, won or loss.

Insanity is starting over a million times, expecting to feel the spark you never did the first time.

Sounds like a plan. I owe Tammy a big thank-you._ Ty sighed. __ think I__ too old for this bachelor party crap.___e__l be planning yours soon enough.__hat was so not appealing, Ty was almost scared. __et__ just go fishing and call it good.___one.

It takes courage to let go of the past and all the mechanisms you have put in place, in order to ease your pain, regret and fear through avoiding responsibility for it.

Hurting people you love is the heaviest kind of regret.