“If you have ever felt hopeless hang on The night you’re enduring may seem long but there is joy coming in the morning. Incredible changes are going to take place in your life as you begin to relinquish your past and renew your present.”
― When Your Past Is Hurting Your Present: Getting Beyond Fears That Hold You Back
― When Your Past Is Hurting Your Present: Getting Beyond Fears That Hold You Back
“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”
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“Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.”
― Shampoo Planet
― Shampoo Planet
“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”
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“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
― Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life
― Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life
Stephen’s 2025 Year in Books
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