God doesn't owe you an explanation or reason for everything he asks you to do. Understanding can wait, but obedience can't.

Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails.

If the only answer ever to anything is You really need to do more and try harder your heart will eventually wear out. Along with your body. And your soul.

When you say "yes" to your life and your path and your work in the world, you are entering into this mystery of creation, a mystery in which everybody starts with a blank page, and "everybody" includes you. Now, let's pause and take a breath. You've been given this gift of life. You were not given his gift or her gift. You were given your gift.

We are always in the endless process of figuring out our ikigai. Your ikigai is a web of work and family and play and how you spend your time, what you give your energies to, what you say "yes" to, what you say "no" to, what new challenges you take on, things that come your way that you never wanted or planned for or know what to do with— your ikigai is a work in progress because you are a work in progress.

Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.

poets are like baseball pitchers. both have their moments. the intervals are the tough things.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

Thou didst not know, who tottered, wandering on high That fate had made thee for the pleasure of the wind, With those great careless wings, Nor yet did I.

Spare me the setting of my fate to music.

Your life today is the sum total of your choices. So if you're not happy with it, look back at your choices and start making different ones. Even if you are struck by lighting and injured, you made choices that led you to that spot at a particular time - and you get to choose how you feel about it afterward.

She had challenged his whole life plan—to find God's will and do it— said he was fixated on finding the one thing God intended for him, when every moment was an opportunity. What if she was right? Could one choice be God's will, and another as well? It might not be about finding the one right answer as much as knowing the heart of God and choosing from the possibilities.