Good Words from Good Books

Here are some words I've been chewing on from some recent books I've read:

Because the rewards are quiet, being dependable in common love is not always inviting. The reward of putting rock on rock isn't always visible. Sometimes the work is dirty. We get scraped and bored. We don't always see the wall of grace we're building for the Lord.

From p. 87 of Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places by L.L. Barkat

When you're with someone else, you share each discovery, but when you are alone, you have to carry each experience with you like a secret, something you have to write on your heart, because there's no other way to preserve it.

From p. 57 of Cold Tangerines by Shauna Niequist

What I know now is that [God's] kindness burns through even the deepest betrayals and invites life from death every chance we let him. There are things that explode into our lives and we call them curses, and then one day, a year later or ten years later, we realize that they are actually something else. They are the very most precious kind of blessings.

. . . .

When what you see in front of you is so far outside of what you dreamed, but you have the belief, the boldness, the courage to call it beautiful instead of calling it wrong, that's celebration.

. . . .

Nothing good comes easily. You have to lose things you thought you loved, give up things you thought you needed. You have to get over yourself, beyond your past, out from under the weight of your future. The good stuff never comes when things are easy. It comes when things are heavily weighted down like moving trucks. It comes just when you thing it never will, like a shimmering Las Vegas rising up out of the dry desert, sparkling and humming with energy, a blessing that rose up out of a bone-dry, dusty curse.

From pps. 177-79 of Cold Tangerines by Shauna Niequist