For me to not trust God is crazy, because His fingerprints are all over my story from top to bottom.

The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.

Practicing authenticity can feel like a daunting choice—there’s risk involved in putting your true self out in to the world. But I believe there’s even more risk in hiding yourself and your gifts from the world. Our unexpressed ideas, opinions, and contributions don’t just go away. They are likely to fester and eat away at our worthiness. I think we should be born with a warning label similar to the ones that come on cigarette packages: Caution: If you trade in your authentic self for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.

Blessed is the man whose life is the practical transcript of God’s will

If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless.

If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not.

I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn’t have a god, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn’t make for an interesting person. I didn’t want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.