“I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep.”

“Could a name be any shorter? Three letters without even the flourish of an e. Ann, a trio of curves and lines.It means “full of grace”.”

“God holds us in the untamed moments too.”

“Trauma's storm can mask the Christ and feelings can lie. I draw all the hurting voices close and I tough their scars with a whisper: sometimes we don't fully see that in Christ, because of Christ, through Christ, He does give us all things good - until we have the perspective of years.In time, years, dust settles.In memory, ages, God emerges.”

“Who trusts the Bridge Builder when you wake to snow on your blankets and winter blasting through cracked walls and dinner for four is a fifty cent box of Kraft Dinner rationed in half and your dad tells you every single day that he just doesn't know how there is ever going to be enough?How do you count on life when the hopes don't add up?A morning in late November, joy shimmers.The hopes don't have to add up. The blessings do....count blessings and discover who can be counted on.”

“When it gets dark, it's only because god has tucked me in a cleft of the rock and covered me, protected, with His hand? In the pitch, I feel like I'm falling, sense the bridge giving way, God long absent. In the dark, the bridge and my world shakes, cracking dreams.But maybe this is true reality: It is in the dark that God is passing by. the bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us, I-beam supporting in earthquake.”

“The real problem of life is never a lack of time. The real problem of life - in my life - is lack of thanksgiving.”

“Get this, kids - how a man proposes isn't what makes him romantic. It's how a man purposes to lay down his life that makes him romantic.”

“Romance isn't measured by how viral your proposal goes. The Internet age may try to sell you something different, but don't ever forget that viral is closely associated with sickness - so don't ever make being viral your goal.”

“I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.”

“A simplified Christmas isn't about circumstances as much as it is about focus.”