“I can't control or predict God, but I trust him enough to allow this journey of knowing him to take me wherever it may lead, even if I don't know where that is until I get there.”

“My striving couldn't get me any closer to knowing God. He had always been there, waiting for me to give up and listen.”

“I'm slowly seeing that God really does love me, although I still sometimes try to earn his love and depend on my talents, achievements, or traits for self-worth. So many times, I choose destructive patterns and misplaced dependencies over his love. I'm weary from my lists of dos and don'ts and tired of trying to figure it out, yet I struggle to simply receive the love and life God wants to give.”

“I put away that stuffed God I had all stitched up with my human understandings and fears. God is less formulaic and quantifiable as he once used to be, but experiencing the reality of his love is infinitely better than dragging that other one around.”

“There is a peace deep within myself from knowing that all things are held within and sustained by the love of God.”

“Perhaps everyone finds him or herself a time or two sifting through the rubble and ruins of a devastated life, wondering whether or not it's worth rebuilding or even salvageable.”

“Pattie helped me understand that you can provide someone with food and shelter, train them in a skill for employment, even offer professional treatment for an addictions, but these acts don't necessarily reach down to that place inside a person where fear, shame, guilt, hurt, and hopelessness wreak havoc. Pattie's greatest need was to be seen, and then to be loved, accepted and validated.”