Pain can either thrust me into the arms of Jesus or make me turn my back on Him. Either way, it's a choice.

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

We’d avoid a lot of insecurity, if we fully, wholly believed in God’s wild affection for us.

We enslave in the manner we talk to ourselves. But the truth is, God already set us free. He secured our release. To constantly hurt ourselves, resting in our inadequacy, is to call Him a LIAR.

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

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)

It’s never easy letting go. But if we don’t learn the art of relinquishment, we’ll never move forward to embrace the new relationships God has for us.

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

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

Hip-hop...has been the proverbial key that’s opened the door for me to roam this breathtaking planet.

The privilege is not writing a novel, it's to have someone read it. When you look at it that way, you realize the responsibility you have to put your very best on the page.

Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it.

It is the quietest and meekest people who are often capable of the most sudden and unexpected violences for the reason that when their control does snap, it goes entirely. (Hercule Poirot)

Reinforce what you want to see repeated.What gets rewarded gets done.

If people are going to run you over for no reason and think they're going to get away with it, you just go out there and ruin their day, too. That's they way I feel.

This ability to exist in pieces is what some adults call resilience. And I suppose in some way it is a kind of resilience, a horrible resilience that makes adults believe children forget trauma.

Secrets tear you apart.

When delivering something like an important letter or other written materials, grasp it firmly in your hand as you go and do not release it once, but hand it over directly to the recipient.