How do I wake up to joy and grace and beauty and all that is the fullest life when I must stay numb to losses and crushed dreams and all that empties me out?

For Lou Ann, life itself was a life-threatening enterprise.

Actually it seems to me that one can hardly say anything either bad enough or good enough about life.

Notice how those who have medicated away their hardships with illegal drugs, alcohol, or sex can seem immature. They may look forty-five, but they have the character of an adolescent. Find a person who has weathered storms rather than avoided them and you will find someone who is wise.

Through our struggles and pain, we are being offered perseverance, the character of God. Hardships are intended to give us a spiritual makeover, "that we may share in his holiness" (Heb. 12:10). Therefore, when God encourages us to persevere, he is not stumbling for encouraging words. He is teaching us how to look like him.

If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.

If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.

God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.

When life hands you lemons make lemonade ! After my cancer diagnosis this became my Moto and it got me though the worst of it! I came out ahead cancer free for five years so far !!!!!

Consider the truly happy people you know. I think it is unlikely that you will find that circumstances have made them happy. They have made themselves happy in spite of circumstances.

You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give

The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you ever were before. If you can live through that you can live through anything. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.