So, CHOOSE today and each day. CHOOSE to embrace life, CHOOSE to believe there is purpose in everything, CHOOSE with passionate determination to hold to TRUTH ~ God is GOOD and He is working for your best, CHOOSE to step out of your comfort zone and bless someone else, CHOOSE to continue to give your best and CHOOSE to rest & be satisfied in that.

(a very dear friend)

The great mystery of God's love is that we are not asked to live as if we are not hurting, as if we are not broken. In fact, we are invited to recognize our brokenness as a brokenness in which we can come in touch with the unique way that God loves us. The great invitation is to live your brokenness under the blessing. I cannot take people's brokenness away and people cannot take my brokenness away. But how do you live in your brokenness? Do you live your brokenness under the blessing or under the curse? The great call of Jesus is to put your brokenness under the blessing.

--Henri JM Nouwen

St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul

He strips their faculties, affections and feelings, both spiritual and sensual, both outward and inward, leaving the understanding dark, the will dry, the memory empty and the affections in the deepest affliction, bitterness and constraint, taking from the soul the pleasure and experience of spiritual blessings which it had aforetime, in order to make of this privation one of the principles which are requisite in the spirit so that there may be introduced into it and united with it the spiritual form of the spirit, which the union of love.