Desire lies at the heart of who God made us to be, who we are at our core. Desire is both our greatest frailty and the mark of our highest beauty. Our desire completes us as we become One with our...

Our story will gain momentum and depth only to the degree that we honestly embrace both loss and fear.

The shattering {of shalom} moves us from a place of shalom to a place that is harsh and unrelenting. The shattering brings us a keen awareness that we are alone and in danger. We are on our own.

In every story, in every life, there are moments of death that take away our name and rename us as strangers, orphans or widows. At the moment of being unnamed, we are thrown into our story. We lose...

Being free means "being free for the other," because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free. DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Hope is not mere optimism; rather, it is moving forward in anticipation of redemption in spite of the improbability of rescue.

It is not presumptuous to ask, 'What is it that you see in me that brings you delight?

Because of the way God has made us, it is impossible finally and completely to deaden the soul. The soul will resurrect, in spite of the cruelty used to destroy it. It will pop up and then be slain...

If we enter our story in heartache, we will hear the whisper of the name that will one day be ours.

A denouement is not a complete or fully resolved ending but a satisfying closure to a story. {in French translates 'an untying, a relaxing of a knot of complexity'}Denouement is the rest that comes...

God is not bound by time, nor is our story. We desperately want our situation to be solved. We want resolution. But, God unfolds the plot in His own time. It is in our months or years of waiting that...

So we grow up in a sea of stories told in a way that fits what we want others to know about us. The stories told in most families are a kind of propaganda. The tragedy is that often these stories are...

Tragedy always moves our story forward in a way shalom could never accomplish.

Our ideal self is revealed in what we value {passion}, how we understand the world {belief}, and what we do to reach our ideal {behavior}. Our passion, belief, and behavior fit together so intimately...

We each see ourselves as being a certain kind of person with a specific set of values, beliefs, and dreams. In practice, however, we often are not what we want to be but instead end up choosing what...

We are what we choose. And we choose whatever our deepest passion compels us to be and to do. To understand the truth of this simple principle, we must examine choice's power to shape our character.

The reluctant leader doesn't merely give accolades to others. It is her true joy to see others awaken to their potential and exceed their greatest dreams. It is the hope of every good teacher to have...

Hope refuses to believe that the inevitable is so. What has always been and can't change is an illusion; if anything is true, it is that change is inevitable, not that the inevitable will not change....