In the United States, the fact that you can start again gives a lot of energy and strength and youth to this country. That is why it's so powerful in many ways, and so creative.

When we dwell on the past, we tend to want to live there. When we dream of the future, we want to go there. Our dreams are where God paints a picture of a life waiting to be created.

Stop feeding your pain and it'll dissipate.

Life is for living, for moving on, for letting the past lie behind us.

If you ever seem to be sliding back into the very thing you've already been set free of, don't even waste time getting discouraged. Often what seems like the same old thing coming back again may be a new layer surfacing that needs to come off. You're not going backwards—you are going deeper.

Keep your attention firmly concentrated on your new path-building and forget all about the old paths.

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.

Transforming the past is possible, thanks to meditation practice.

The worst of the curses that people inflict on us, the real abuse and terror, can't be forgotten or undone, but they can be put to good use in the new life that one has taken up. It is a kind of death; the lid closes on what went before. But the past is not denied. And we are still here, with all of our talents, gifts, and failings, our strengths and weaknesses. All the baggage comes along: nothing wasted, nothing lost.

One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14).

In it she told me, "Thanks a lot! I'm ruined - gloriously ruined." I nodded with sudden understanding. "that's it - that describes what has happened to me." I was ruined for life as I had known it before, but gloriously ruined!

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.