Charlie says that "God gives us a choice when we face difficult circumstances." We can choose misery or "we can choose to face our trials with God's help, knowing that we'll come out the other side as stronger people for the experience."

Wounding, at best, only temporarily releases pain.

God can take the ugly stains in our lives, those scars that run deep, and transform them into masterpieces of His grace and mercy that will bless others. It's time for a makeover. Even now God can turn the ugliness of sin into beauty marks. Just come to Him and ask. Surrender your scars to His gentle touch.

I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.

In life you will meet two kinds of people: Those who build you up and those who tear you down. But in the end, you will thank them both.

Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has.

Courage is the gift of character.

One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.

He loved her, and he would love her until the day he was too old for loving--but he could not have her. So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.

One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of the individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye.

Is your generation so soft that they talk of going to pieces if life doesn't always present itself in terms of beautiful, easy decisions?

She shut her eyes and he could see that the lids were trembling. Dear little Dot, life is so damned hard. She was crying upon his shoulder. So damned hard, so damned hard, he repeated aimlessly; it just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever any more. That's the last and worst thing it does. Frantic