Michele Cushatt > Quotes

“But a full life doesn’t mean an easy life. In many cases, it means just the opposite.”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“I could either hang on to fear or hold on to my faith. But I could not hang on to both.”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“There is strength in empty. Not the kind of strength we wish for. We want polished strength, the kind that wears a cape and leaps tall buildings with a single bound. I couldn’t leap or fly or save anyone from catastrophe. In fact, I could barely show up. But I did. Show up. And that ended up being a strength all of its own.”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“authenticity ministers far more than put-togetherness. And vulnerability builds a far stronger bond than perfection.”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“Whether we’re eight years old or eighty, we want to know we are valued by those we love.”
― Michele Cushatt, I Am: A 60-Day Journey to Knowing Who You Are Because of Who He Is

“In all of my mothering failings, I’d managed to get one thing right. Love. And it mattered most of all.”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“Peace isn’t a byproduct of control, the payout of a happy conclusion. Peace is the infiltrating, life-giving presence of a very real God. One who loves nothing more than to step into the middle of locked and darkened rooms and impossible circumstances, close enough to touch.”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“Worry, like cancer, consumes life, eating away at a person from the inside out. It exaggerates the unknown and clouds the known until the worried person sees only the horror of what might be, rather than the beauty of what already is.”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. — ANNE LAMOTT, Bird by Bird”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“Faith is choosing the anchor of your focus. It’s about turning your eyes away from the questions that lead to fear, and instead locking eyes with the one who knows the answers.”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“don’t know what’s more exhausting about parenting: the getting up early, or acting like you know what you’re doing. — JIM GAFFIGAN, Dad Is Fat”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“Where is my faith? In myself, more often than not. Which is why an unexpected squall — every last one of them over the span of two years — unraveled me. A boat anchored to itself is not anchored at all.”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“horror”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“There is strength in empty.”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“This is a rough-draft life. And whatever I didn’t like about today, I can always edit tomorrow.”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“These stones may be rocks from your back yard that you label accordingly. Or perhaps your stone is more experiential: a verse read, a note received, a gift given, a person encountered. The point is to identify moments when you experienced God’s presence and then to mark them in such a way that you can return to them when life tempts you to forget. Collect these twelve stones, one for each chapter, and set them up as a testimony.”
― Michele Cushatt, Relentless: The Unshakeable Presence of a God Who Never Leaves

“It’d be easier to pack a suitcase, go on a short-term adventure, and return home a week or two later to wash the dirt out of my clothes, put the suitcase in the closet, and log my memories in a scrapbook. A worthy act of service? Yes, of course. But neatly packaged and not too interrupting. A mission trip would allow me to keep my grandiose promises to manageable portions, something that didn’t stretch and sting to the point of sacrifice.”
― Michele Cushatt, Undone: A Story of Making Peace With an Unexpected Life

“As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Josh. 1:2, 5).”
― Michele Cushatt, Relentless: The Unshakeable Presence of a God Who Never Leaves

“But the disciples missed one life-saving reality: Jesus was in their boat.”
― Michele Cushatt, A Faith That Will Not Fail: 10 Practices to Build Up Your Faith When Your World Is Falling Apart

“We couldn’t be more wrong. Storms are a universal part of the human experience. No one escapes suffering or the day-to-day wear and tear on our human existence. “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous,” Jesus reminds us (Matt. 5:45). And “in this world you will have trouble,” He warns (John 16:33). Although our choices impact our path, we can’t control the weather as we walk it. And just as weather reveals the stability of a home, suffering exposes the status of a person’s faith.”
― Michele Cushatt, A Faith That Will Not Fail: 10 Practices to Build Up Your Faith When Your World Is Falling Apart

“The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famishing for want of His Presence. —A. W. TOZER, THE PURSUIT OF GOD”
― Michele Cushatt, Relentless: The Unshakeable Presence of a God Who Never Leaves