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141 " I can’t fully understand the people who write to say that, sorry, their lives have been grand. I receive long accounts of how deeply satisfied some people are with their many, many achievements. “Younger by the day!” boasts an elderly pastor. "
― Kate Bowler , Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved
142 " 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. "
― Kate Bowler , No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear
143 " imagine letting go when we forget that choices are luxuries, allowing us to maintain our illusion of control. But until those choices are plucked from our hands—someone dies, someone leaves, something breaks—we are only playing at surrender. "
144 " This is what happens to all of us. We fall ill. We get old. We can’t have that baby or keep that relationship. We missed our chance to go to this school or take that job. Our parents die before we know them, and our kids forget our love. We lose people before we can learn to live without them. "
145 " When life gives you a monthly subscription to miserable news, it’s really hard to take other people’s problems seriously. "
― Kate Bowler , Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection
146 " When prosperity believers live out their daily struggles with smiles on their faces, sometimes I want to applaud. They confront the impossible and joyfully insist that God make a way. They obediently put miracle oil on their failing bodies. They give large offerings to the church and expect great things. They stubbornly get out of their hospital beds and declare themselves healed, and every now and then, it works. "
147 " he wrapped his strong hands around mine and said, quietly: “I wore this clerical collar to impress you. And also to get through hospital security. "
148 " Whenever I have fallen apart, she has reassembled the pieces. I know she wants to reach through the phone and pull me back into our bubble, where one of us cries and the other diagnoses the problem with merciless affection. "
149 " So often the experiences that define us are the ones we didn't pick. Cancer. Betrayal. Miscarriage. Job loss. Mental illness. "
150 " Just let me point out the books that actively blame people for causing their own diseases." Which she lets me do. The next time I wheel past the bookstore window, copies of YOUR BEST LIFE NOW have been replaced by copies of Joel Osteen's new book, You Can, You Will. "
151 " What if rich did not have to mean wealthy, and whole did not have to mean healed? "
152 " Will my Duke insurance cover this?" I asked, trying to suppress my excitement before I became too hopeful. He slapped his forehead. "I thought I had thought of everything! "
153 " And when I screw up or forget or grow weary, bless me with the courage to begin again. Loving and loving again. Being changed by Your love and transforming the world one little act of love at a time. May it be so. "
154 " Chelsea and I have spent most of our lives together, and she set in stone for me what it means to feel loved and understood. In high school she learned to forgive me for our time at the same childhood judo camp, where I accidentally became her sworn enemy by repeatedly flipping her over my eleven-year-old hip and asking her, while she was flat on her back, if she had had her Wheaties today. Long ago we realized that everything that happens to one of us happens to both of us, so we treat our lives like a tandem bicycle. Where she goes, I go, but we both look a little ridiculous. "
155 " I think the solution to the past and the future is that there is none. It’s that we borrow from each of them for really — to make really meaningful choices; is that we pull from the past in order to inform a richer future. We pull from the future to be like, Well, it reminds me that these things are yet undone. But if we prevent ourselves from moving between past, present, and future, I think we become really narrow in our cultural language for how to live. "
― Kate Bowler
156 " Surrender "Life is unstable because it is life. But I am steady. "
157 " 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. "
158 " We measured our worth by how tired we were every morning "
159 " I don’t know what the word “trust” means anymore, except there are moments when I realize that it feels a lot like love. "
160 " there is nothing generic about a human life. When I was little, to get to my bus stop, I had to cross a field that had so much snow my parents fitted me with ski pants and knee-high thermal boots that were toasty to forty degrees below zero. I am excellent in the stern of a canoe, but I never got the hang of riding a bike with no hands. I have seen the northern lights because my parents always woke up the whole house when the night sky was painted with color. I love the smell of clover and chamomile because my sister and I used to pick both on the way home from swimming lessons. I spent weeks of my childhood riding around on my bike saving drowning worms after a heavy rain. My hair is my favorite feature even though it’s too heavy for most ponytails, and I still can’t parallel park. There is no life in general. Each day has been a collection of trivial details—little intimacies and jokes and screw-ups and realizations. "