There is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for.

The way up to the top of the mountain is always longer than you think. Dont fool yourself, the moment will arrive when what seemed so near is still very far.

The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.

The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.

At times there is a crushing before a crowning.

Often your greatest battles come before your greatest blessings.

Life sometimes hurts like hell but I've discovered that deleting God from the equation doesn't actually help. It merely removes all meaning and morality from the mess, and all real hope from the future

I feel like God is waiting to see if I am waiting. If he just flooded in with answers and guidance right now, I would not have changed; I would not have learned to wait and trust without the answers and without a road map for the future. So I'm kind of glad that God was silent, because I actually want to wait; I want to prove my mettle to God. I don't necessarily want ease and instant anything any more.

my disruptive experiences are not outside impositions to or an attack on my faith, but are the soil out of which my faith matures and takes shape.

Grace grows best in winter.

Perhaps her long dark night fueled her life, where she kept moving anyway, as an act of trust so deep it cannot be rationally explained—and indeed would look foolish if anyone tried. And the result was about as clear a Jesus movement as you can point to in recent history. Mother Teresa learned

I am amazed and encouraged by those who have lived through these moments of hell on earth and have continued on in the life of faith anyway. They have something to teach people like me: no matter what we think we know, no matter how sure we happen to think we are, suffering is the place where our sense of certainty about God's ways fades like a dream and forces us to consider that what we know may not be as central to our faith as we might think.