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101 " no one in a hospital sleeps in the conventional sense. There are only intervals of sleep without rest, interrupted by unfamiliar voices. What’s your date of birth? On a scale from one to ten, how would you rate your pain? To this day, if you wake me up from a nap, I will immediately tell you my birthday. "
― Kate Bowler , No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear
102 " The problem with aspirational lists, of course, is that they often skip the point entirely. Instead of helping us grapple with our finitude, they have approximated infinity. With unlimited time and resources, we could do anything, be anyone. We could become more adventurous by jumping out of airplanes, more traveled by visiting every continent, or more cultured by reading the most famous books of all time. With the right list, we would never starve with the hunger of want. But it is much easier to count items than to know what counts. "
103 " We live and we are loved and we are gone. "
104 " I feel a spark of horror each time I remember it: we come undone. "
105 " I look around me and think, there are the choices I've made. The people I've loved. No matter how fleeting this was, I need them to believe everything mattered. This life was enough.But it's not true, of course.Nothing will add up to enough. I wish someone has told me that the end of a life is a complex equation. Years dwindle into months, months into days, and you must count them. All my dreams and bedtimes with a boy in dinosaur pajamas must be squeezed into hours, minutes, seconds.How should I spend them? "
106 " Nothing will exempt me from the pain of being human. "
107 " Everybody pretends that you only die once. But that's not true. You can die a thousand possible futures in the course of a single, stupid life. "
108 " In a spiritual world in which healing is a divine right, illness is a symptom of unconfessed sin—a symptom of a lack of forgiveness, unfaithfulness, unexamined attitudes, or careless words. A suffering believer is a puzzle to be solved. "
― Kate Bowler , Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved
109 " Why? God, are you here? What does this suffering mean? "
110 " and went another way. It is an image I cannot forget: two of the world’s wealthiest Christians shaking their fists at the sky, protesting to the God of Fair. "
111 " I was surrounded by the world's luckiest people in a culture that doesn't believe in luck. "
― Kate Bowler
112 " It is a mystery to me why some mere minutes transform into moments, hovering outside of time. And how they ebb and flow, stirring wonder and the ache for more. I know the love of a God who is beyond all wanting, but the more I live, the more I want and want and want. "
113 " I would not say it was simply that I didn't stop to smell the roses. It was the sin of arrogance, of becoming impervious to life itself. I failed to love what was present and decided to love what was possible instead. "
114 " All of our masterpieces, ridiculous. All of our striving, unnecessary. All of our work, unfinished, unfinishable. We do too much, never enough, and are done before we've even started.It's better this way. "
115 " ...ease up on the life lessons. Life is a privilege, not a reward. "
116 " When I teach pastors at the seminary where I work, I lecture them about the First Great Awakening and religious responses to the Civil War and how their political differences will ruin their next Thanksgiving if they don’t learn to shut their traps. "
117 " See?” I say to my dad. “I’m not a normal person.” “No,” he says softly, reaching out to pull me to him. “You’re a superhero. But I wish you didn’t have to be. "
118 " Sorry," I continue, "I'm not trying to be a jerk. But everyone seems to be proceeding under the assumption that their luck is guaranteed once they hit... I don't know middle class? No one seems to understand that everyone's life hangs by a thread. "
119 " It felt like something had pushed the reset button and my life had only begun. I should have asked for a birth certificate for myself. "
120 " Money for treatment. My parents and siblings are taking out loans against their homes now and setting retirement ideas aside to help cover what insurance denies. "