Anna White Quotes

Anna White Quotes

My fear of being real, of being seen, paralyzes me into silence. I crave the touch and the connection, but I’m not always brave enough to open my hand and reach out. This is the great challenge: to be seen, accepted, and loved, I must first reveal, offer, and surrender.

There’s always a choice,” Lucian reassured her. “Always.” He kissed her
forehead softly. “I love you,” he said. He lips trailed down her face, brushing slowly over her nose, across her eyelids. “I would stay with you forever, until the end of
Time.

Now I know this is going to seem counter to every instinct that you have, but I'm going to ask you to sit still, or I'll put you in the trunk.

I think this is what we all want to hear: that we are not alone in hitting the bottom, and that it is possible to come out of that place courageous, beautiful, and strong.

I believe in beauty. I believe in goodness. I believe in the power of turning: the other cheek, time, curve of the earth.

I know what it's like to sleep in fear, to starve myself to be worthy, to be ashamed of my voice, to want to sleep forever. To question why I deserve to live.

I name you today, heart fears. I am small, but you are smaller. You will not stop me. You have a voice, fears, and I must listen, but then I will open my heart. I will love you right to death.

God wants to take the fears that you and I are holding onto with both hands. He throws them aside, effortless, and then takes our empty hands in His and fills them with his love. He is not a hard driver. He wants to provide.

The first night in the hospital with a snuffling baby girl, I learned that my family was not the only thing that had expanded. There was now a whole new world of opportunities for judgment and self-doubt.

It is the capacity to feel consuming grief and pain and despair that also allows me to embrace love and joy and beauty with my whole heart. I must let it all in.

A basic reality of life is that we all struggle. We hurt and have hurt other people. We all feel lost sometimes.
This isn’t all we are, but it is a part of who we are. The only question I have when I’m with someone is, “Can they admit it? And will they let me admit it too?

I love that there's no cutoff where we get labeled and sent off to a home for hopeless, cranky, depressives. Every day is a new chance to listen longer and be braver and love more. We get to try again and again and again.

I doubt that anyone has a Damascus moment after experiencing discrimination. Most people seem to have shining moments of change after experiencing grace.

All of my secrets and scars and wishes and dreams can live together in this one body without shame, without blame, and without fear. I am all loved, all accepted, and all in service to God. In his eyes, regardless of what I did or didn’t do today, I am loved. I am His, so I am enough.

I grew up believing Christians didn’t just believe in Jesus. To be saved, people had to look and speak a certain way. They followed a long list of nots to ensure their holiness. They fit the mold. They followed the rules.

Everything we have, everything we are, is a gift.

How can we judge and shame ourselves if this is true?

The shadow is dark and the woods are cold, but they are not endless. No matter how lost you are now, you are not lost forever. You are findable.

Love just keeps on looking.

Love is forever tries.

I was taught growing up not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, to withdraw myself from the sinful 'others'. But we are all others. We are all sinners in someone's eyes.

In this week I see such a picture of life, hard and joyful pressed up together and sleeping in the same bed. They come knit together. The lines of pain run through the joy and remind us to go all in, because life is short. The joy edges the pain and gives us a reason to rise.

My husband says this longing for isolation is not a good quality, that if I wanted to be a hermit I should have moved to the West Coast and adopted a lot of cats, not gotten married and had children that demand to be fed several times a day.

I've always let my imagination run free, but now I try to rein it in. Things never turn out the way I imagine, so I am letting them rest. Instead, I am holding just what is in my hand.

The griefs that have been hardest for me were the ones I didn’t recognize as griefs, because they came in what were supposed to be the best times of my life. No one whispered in my ear that the best times, the ones that change our lives, are woven with the thread of loss.

This is the only advice I offer you. Pick the small thing, and carry it on. Let it change your life.

I believe God lets us stumble along, slowly finding our way, and giving us chances to pick each other up.

Maybe it’s not about having a beautiful day, but about finding beautiful moments. Maybe a whole day is just too much to ask. I could choose to believe that in every day, in all things, no matter how dark and ugly, there are shards of beauty if I look for them.

I felt like I was being carried over the threshold of a sisterhood of loss. I knew I was not walking alone, and that eventually I would bob back up to the surface of the deep, because the women around me showed me what healing looks like.

I've had a lot of therapists, so I've had the opportunity to approach my fear in many different ways. I've faced it head on and sideways and tried to tiptoe up behind it.

I am not enough in myself; I can barely make it through buying milk and school supplies. Thank goodness there is a Guardian to come before me and throw off the dark.

The most amazing thing is that all my sorrows, all of my darkest moments, are becoming my gifts.

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