And when enough hardship happens within a small circumference, the roads to all the familiar places are little more than crisscrossing scars. By the time every direction you could take at a four-way stop—right, left, straight ahead, or reverse—carries the stomach-turning scent of carnage, moving can mean surviving.

The thing about life is that, for most folks, it hurts from the start.

Embrace the tension.

So on those days when it seems like God is silent and you have nothing to show for your life besides dung and death, know that even those are not wasted. God is using even the messiest parts and the most painful and seemingly hopeless parts to get your soil ready. You, loved and chosen by God, have much good fruit yet to bear.

Opposition is anything that opposes (1) us, (2) the work God desires to do in us, and (3) the work God desires to do through us.

Still, from where we sit, even on this side of the Cross, where death gives way to life, sometimes what God has done for us can feel, instead, like something He has done to us.

Satan will try to stir up what our faithful Refiner wants to skim off.

What you must trust in these moments is that anything God breaks down is intended to build you up.

The absence of regret makes no guarantee of the absence of pain.

God chose to teach me with the very things Satan had used to defeat me.

My reputation grows with every failure.

I think we build resilience to prepare for whatever adversity we'll face. And we all face some adversity - we're all living some form of Option B.