But grace has changed my nature for the better, to keep me from joining them and shedding innocent blood.

It is historically and biologically true that there can be no birth and growth without birth and growing pains. Whenever there is the emergence of the new we confront the recalcitrance of the old. So the tensions which we witness in the world today are indicative of the fact that a new world order is being born and an old order is passing away.

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.

God illuminated something powerful in that moment. One e-mail represented my family of origin - a family bent toward hiding. And my new family, the one I'd forged from the ashes of my past, desperate for Jesus to help me, represents who I am today. I am loved. I am surrounded by children and a husband who cheer for me.

Today's caterpillars are tomorrow's butterflies.

When a caterpillar looks in the mirror, he sees a butterfly.

You cannot carry your past without dropping your future.

Your past must die for your future to live.

I have become convinced that God thoroughly enjoys fixing and saving things that are broken. That means that no matter how hurt and defeated you feel, no matter how badly you have been damaged, God can repair you. God can give anyone a second chance.

Christianity is not a religion at all, but a revelation and a rescue and an ensuing relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

you don't really have to know all that much yourself; you just do it differently than it was done before.

There was, in the space of little more than an hour, in Steve Bannon's not unamused observation, a befuddled Trump morphing into a disbelieving Trump and then into a quite horrified Trump. But still to come was the final transformation: suddenly, Donald Trump became a man who believed that he deserved to be and was wholly capable of being the president of the United States.