It is from the depths of dark and dirty places in our lives that we scream for God's attention and help while misunderstanding that, just like with a natural seed, it is the microbes in the soil of life that eat away at our efforts to protect ourselves from harm.

God doesn't cut us to kill us but to heal us. It's the difference between experiencing the blade of a dagger in a back-alley attack and the blade of a scalpel in an operating room.

A pearl of great price is our pain wrapped in God's perfection.

Crushing requires purification. Do you know anyone who would purify something they do not intend to use? Your crushing cannot be the end, because God would never purify you if He didn't intend to use you.

Even in the moments of your greatest anguish, you often find unexpected blessings alongside and commingled with your losses.

There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.

We should not expect to have all the blessings of life and none of its trials. It would make this world too delightful a dwelling place, and I fear we would never care to leave it.

She'd once thought God would never intentionally hurt her. But looking back over her life, she'd had cause to rethink that. She was certain nothing touched her life that didn't first filter through the loving hands of her heavenly father. But she was also convinced that God sometimes wounded, in order to bind up. And that He shattered, so that His hands could heal. This was part of His inheritance she'd overlooked before, but never would again.

She couldn't help but wonder at the events of recent days, and at how—even in the face of such misfortune, there was so much good,

Life wasn't all neat and tidy. Along with joy and happiness, there were bitter disappointments and heart-rending loose ends.

The artist has been kind to me," she said softly, not looking at him. "The artist drew what he saw. What he sees even now," he said. A single tear slipped down her cheek. "I wish this were easier, Jake." "Nothing is easy, Aletta. At least nothing worth having.

Sometimes you had to let a person stumble, let 'em fall flat out—no matter how much it hurt to see—before they could come to grips with how bad off they were. Because until a person realized that, there wasn't much helping them.