“Who are you today? Are you a gulfstream, uplifting others... or are you a bad parachute?”

“In an essay titled A View From the Front Line, Jencks described her experience with cancer as like being woken up midflight on a jumbo jet and then thrown out with a parachute into a foreign landscape without a map:"There you are, the future patient, quietly progressing with other passengers toward a distant destination when, astonishingly (Why me?) a large hole opens in the floor next to you. People in white coats appear, help you into a parachute and — no time to think — out you go."You descend. You hit the ground....But where is the enemy? What is the enemy? What is it up to?...No road. No compass. No map. No training. Is there something you should know and don't?"The white coats are far, far away, strapping others into their parachutes. Occasionally they wave but, even if you ask them, they don't know the answers. They are up there in the Jumbo, involved with parachutes, not map-making.”

“The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”

“You said parachute. You think we're going to parachute out of here?""Yep.""I don't think so.""Ah, come on. Tigers aren't afraid of heights, are they?""This isn't about heights. This is about being extremely high up in a tree and hurtling out bodies into oblivion based on a strange fabric that you now claim is a parachute.”

“True love is supposed to make you into a better person-uplift you.”

“God is not interested in what you think you should be or feel. He is not interested in the narrative you construct for yourself, or that others construct for you. Rather, He is interested in you, the you who suffers, the you who inflicts suffering on others, the you who hides, the you who has bad days (and good ones). And He meets you where you are.”