How we handle our tough times stay with us a long time. (P68)

Yet he never gave up. Bitterness never staked its claim. Anger never metastasized into hatred. His heart never hardened; his resolve never vanished. He not only survived; he thrived.

Life pulls us down.

The meaning of life. The wasted years of life. The poor choices of life. God answers the mess of life with one word: grace.

So did yours. Joseph's pit came in the form of a cistern. Maybe yours came in the form of a diagnosis, a foster home, or a traumatic injury. Joseph was thrown in a hole and despised. And you? Thrown in an unemployment line and forgotten. Thrown into a divorce and abandoned, into a bed and abused. The pit. A kind of death, waterless and austere. Some people never recover. Life is reduced to one quest: get out and never be hurt again. Not simply done. Pits have no easy exits.

Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

Every storm runs out of rain.

This book has been written to examine some of the ways love heals and helps a person to climb impossible heights and rise from immeasurable depths.

Sugar cane reach up to God And every baby crying Shame the blanket of my night And all my days are dying

This book is dedicated to MY SON, GUY JOHNSON, AND ALL THE STRONG BLACK BIRDS OF PROMISE who defy the odds and gods and sing their songs

You may trode me in the very dirt. But still, like dust, I'll rise.