Hope Carpenter

“Imagine you take a seat in a chair, and it completely falls apart beneath you. You’ve sat down in this chair a hundred times, and it’s always been sturdy, but this time, it just completely falls to pieces beneath you. Someone can take that chair and fix it up and tell you it’s as good as new, but are you going to plop yourself right down on that chair? I wouldn’t. I would ease my way back into that chair. First, I would press on the arm to see if it held. I would look it over carefully, scrutinizing every joint and every surface. Then I might tentatively put a little weight on it. Eventually, I’d try to let it hold my full weight, but as soon as it creaked a bit beneath me, I’d probably overreact, jumping to my feet, sure it was about to collapse again. It would take me quite a while to trust that this chair would hold my weight again.”
― Hope Carpenter, The Most Beautiful Disaster: How God Makes Miracles Out of Our Mistakes