idolizing

The temptation is to make an idol of our own experience, to assume our pain is more singular than it is. Experience means nothing if it does not mean beyond itself: we mean nothing unless and until our hard-won meanings are internalized and catalyzed within the lives of others. There is something I am meant to see, something for which my own situation and suffering are the lens, but the cost of such seeing__ am just beginning to realize__ay very well be any final clarity or perspective on my own life, my own faith. That would not be a bad fate, to burn up like the booster engine that falls away from the throttling rocket, lighting a little dark as I go.

I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to 'make them alive'_but I'm just a fucked up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours.

I cursed myself. For once, heaven had sent me "Beauty" in its most perfected form and I abandoned it. She might not have been a girl after all but an angel: a force to guide me on this hazardous path of life I hurry down... How can life be hazardous if it can only end in death?

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)