Hope

"And you never fall behind?”“Of course I do. But I always feel guilty when that happens. After all, my journal is the oldest and most loyal friend I have. And it never interrupts me when I’m speaking,” he added, with a boyish grin."

"I waited for the seasons of love to pass from this cold winter to the summer heat I dreamed of."

"how these words, wait to diein the arms of all the poetry..yet to be written."

"We obtained literature by our own efforts, it is a product of our own life, and that is why we love it so much and hold it so dear, why we pin our hopes on it."

"The back of the church was raised up from the ground. Tossed in among its supports were what looked like moldering bones. My heart ached so much for these poor souls, neglected even after death, I turned away to head back, but managed only a few burdened steps. I drew up abruptly and froze. An old, worn marker, standing off by itself, grabbed at my heart. It was Edgar Alan Poe. He fit in so perfectly there. Maybe I did, too. His sorrow and pain ate through me as I stood, head lowered. Can’t even death let us step away from our darkness? It was like he was scratching a warning into the dirt with his finger, and meant it specifically for me. Don’t wait around for sermons to wash you clean, he seemed to say, for death or drugs to close your eyes. God won’t come roaring in with fresh troops to drive away the darkness we’ve walled our own souls up in. He didn’t put us there; we’ll have to dig ourselves out. I looked at my own life as I stood there, feeling buried alive, like some of his characters. But unlike his characters I had caught a flash of hope."

"You can’t become who you’re supposed to be if you keep looking back on what might have been.” - Alexis"

"I want to be a woman who lives totally abandoned to the first commandment: to love my Lord, my God, with all my heart. I don’t want the reputation that I love God, I don’t want to write songs about loving God, I don’t want to talk about loving God. I want to actually love God. When I close my eyes, I want my heart to move. When I close my eyes and I look at Him, I want to feel alive on the inside. I want to look at Him with a fire in my heart and it’s real."

"Jesus is a descendant of David, the beloved of God. Jesus is the only begotten Son of God who was born into this world and died and rose again. Saint John calls him the Word and the Light. When he died, he did so as atonement for our sins, and when he rose, he did so to defeat the power and curse of death and hell on this once-holy world. Do you believe in him?"

"Hope is a fire more ravenous than the flames of temptation.  For if only a portion of it poisons your veins, it is enough to make you stand against ridiculous odds again and again and again."

"Don't ever feel like your best days are behind you. Reinvention is the purest form of hope. Make today your best yet!"

"I'd rather believe in something and be wrong, than believe in nothing and be wrong."

"I am not moved by what I see.; I am moved by what I believe. What I do believe is greater, stronger and mightier than what I have my eyes on. Deep in my heart I do believe, I shall overcome."

"Trust is like a two-way mirror, transparent on one side, with a blind dimness unable to see through on the other side."

"It takes the trust of God for things that exist, to wait on him for the evidence of things that do not exist. Faith and hope make you to thank God for the invisible things by looking at the visible things which were once invisible too."

"Men are more resilient than that, I think. Our belief is often strongest when it should be weakest. That is the nature of hope."

"Sometimes belief is the reason for liberation; other times, our own conviction prevents our escape. It depends on whether or not you believe God is listening, if you can cling to hope in the gravest of times. Hope is a precious life force within us."

"As long as there is life, there is a potential; and as long as there is a potential, there will be a success! You will sprout again when cut down! You will rise again even when you fall!"

"Twelve minutes. I can give you that."

"No parent should have to bury a child ... No mother should have to bury a son. Mothers are not meant to bury sons. It is not in the natural order of things. I buried my son. In a potter's field. In a field of Blood. In empty, acrid silence. There was no funeral. There were no mourners. His friends all absent. His father dead. His sisters refusing to attend. I discovered his body alone, I dug his grave alone, I placed him in a hole, and covered him with dirt and rock alone. I was not able to finish burying him before sundown, and I'm not sure if that affected his fate ... I begrudge God none of this. I do not curse him or bemoan my lot. And though my heart keeps beating only to keep breaking--I do not question why. I remember the morning my son was born as if it was yesterday. The moment the midwife placed him in my arms, I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding. I remember holding my son, and looking over at my own mother and saying, "Now I understand why the sun comes up at day and the stars come out at night. I understand why rain falls gently. Now I understand you, Mother" ... I loved my son every day of his life, and I will love him ferociously long after I've stopped breathing. I am a simple woman. I am not bright or learn-ed. I do not read. I do not write. My opinions are not solicited. My voice is not important ... On the day of my son's birth I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding ... The world tells me that God is in Heaven and that my son is in Hell. I tell the world the one true thing I know: If my son is in Hell, then there is no Heaven--because if my son sits in Hell, there is no God."

"A promise is something that has been given but not yet realized."