I realized later that I had spent years waiting for my husband to give me the very thing I just gave Riley. I couldn’t control my husband’s heart, but I could choose to stop protecting my own “authority” long enough to be human.

I thought he was sorry. He just wanted things to feel normal again.

The church should be the one place where we don’t have to bring the gold paper and the red bow. We need to become a people who are less repulsed by the ruins and more acquainted with the God who dwells within them.

You are not the woman your pain is trying to convince you that you are.

"If there is no evidence of ra’ah—no real care, no protection, no willingness to carry the weight of others—then it is not what it claims to be. And you are allowed to leave."

Once I saw what color the baseboards were supposed to be, I realized I could not stop there. The revelation hit me that often the dirtiest things in our lives are not obvious.