We were shoved against the back wall. Thirty or forty people were all that could fit in. And still the soldiers drove women over the side, cursing, jabbing with their guns. Shrieks rose from the center of the car but still the press increased. It was only when eighty women were packed inside that the door thumped shut and we heard iron bolts driven into place.

We had had many Jewish children over a night or several nights at the Beje and even the youngest had developed the uncanny silence of small hunted things.

A. W. Tozer, who said, "It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.

You win when you quit trying.

Though Satan makes strong men weak, God is in the business of making weak men strong. Your past isn't the most important thing. Your future is.

I want a pain that has a beginning and an end, not one that goes on forever and cuts all the way to the bone.

We all have scars. It's when you're honest about them that you find the people who will love you in spite of your nicks and dents. Perhaps even because of them. The people who don't. These people aren't the ones for you.

Like the beach glass, the wood was more beautiful because of its journey, because of the things it had been through. Inside the perfect shells is dim, It's through the cracks, the light comes in.

You can't fix the past. You can only change your way of reacting to it.

What we cannot change, we must endure without bitterness.

The storms come and it's water and wind as far as the eye can see for a bit. But winds calm and the waters drain. We find our feet again, and the ground under us sprouts a new crop of seed. That is always the way of it. I don't suppose this storm will be any different.

The most difficult battles are not the ones fought outside the armor, but the ones within it.