hardship

I have a deep-down belief that there are folks in the world who are good through and through, and others who came in mean and will go out mean. It's like coffee. Once it's roasted, it all looks brown. Until you pour hot water on it and see what comes out. Folks get into hot water, you see what comes out.

It is the lumps and trialsThat tell us whether we shall be knownAnd whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star.

It was like she had been playing 'nhodo' with her life, foolishly trying to outsmart an imaginary playmate named Fate.

The smaller you get__he smaller life makes you__he easier it is to see the grandeur of grace. While I am far more incapable than I may have initially thought, God is infinitely more capable than I ever hoped.

In league with being graced by greatness, prepare to be greeted, by all that is beneath you.

Endure every hardship as a discipline of grace.

Those who were raised in poverty and have been successful to overcome the shame of it, understands the hardship of those who are left behind.

Before I was married, I thought the sound of bangles jangling on my forearms would be delightful. I looked forward to being able to wear bells around my ankles and silver necklaces around my neck, but not any more, not since I had learned what they represented for the man who gave them. A necklace was no prettier than a piece of of rope that ties a goat to a tree, depriving it of freedom.

Many a rich man__ bed is bigger than many a poor woman__ bedroom; his bedroom, her house.

What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.

Throw out old clothes and shoes, and train your brain to get rid of old thoughts and ideas.

It__ not about getting over things, it__ about making room for them. It__ about painting the picture with contrast.

We all make mistakes. It is important to learn from them and just as important to know when to move on.

A feistiness of spirit girds us in the most treacherous of moments. A metamorphosis of spirit often occurs after a person conscientiously surveys the resultant outcome of surviving a momentous ordeal and they transfigure personal heartache into a magnanimous manner of living in a just and righteous manner.

The pressure of adversity is the most powerful sustainer of accountability. It's as though everything you do is multiplied by 50 in order to surpass those with a head-start. I was never capable of slacking when at the threshold of failure.

I hate forcing myself to go to bed to avoid committing suicide.

Conversion can also occur among those who already have the faith. Christians will become real Christians, with less façade and more foundation. Catastrophe will divide them from the world, force them to declare their basic loyalties; it will revive shepherds who shepherd rather than administrate, reverse the proportion of saints and scholars in favor of saints, create more reapers for the harvest, more pillars of fire for the lukewarm; it will make the rich see that real wealth is in the service of the needy; and, above all else, it will make the glory of Christ__ Cross shine out in a love of the brethren for one another as true and loyal sons of God.

Illness especially, may be a blessed forerunner of the individual__ conversion. Not only does it prevent him from realizing his desires; it even reduces his capacity for sin, his opportunities for vice. In that enforced detachment from evil, which is a Mercy of God, he has time to search himself, to appraise his life, to interpret it in terms of larger reality. He considers God, and, at that moment, there is a sense of duality, a confronting of personality with Divinity, a comparison of the facts of his life with the ideal from which he fell. The soul is forced to look inside itself, to inquire whether there is more peace in this suffering than in sinning. Once a sick man, in his passivity, begins to ask, __hat is the purpose of my life? Why am I here?_ the crisis has already begun. Conversion becomes possible the very moment a man ceases to blame God or life and begins to blame himself; by doing so, he becomes able to distinguish between his sinful barnacles and the ship of his soul. A crack has appeared in the armor of his egotism; now the sunlight of God__ grace can pour in. But until that happens, catastrophes can teach us nothing but despair.