Walter Wangerin Jr.

“Mirrors that hide nothing hurt me. But this is the hurt of purging and precious renewal - and these are the mirrors of dangerous grace.”

“In your attempts to heal this beloved one, the Holy Spirit finds opportunity to keep the promise of Jesus - and indeed, to heal.”

“Sorrow spoken lends a little courage to the speaker.”

“So go back to the books. They will comfort you and cheer you. If you earnestly work with them, neither sorrow nor anxiety nor distress nor suffering need trouble your mind any more, no, not evermore.”

“The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow. Happiness lives where sorrow is not. When sorrow arrives, happiness dies. It can't stand pain. Joy, on the other hand, rises from sorrow and therefore can withstand all grief. Joy, by the grace of God, is the transfiguration of suffering into endurance, and of endurance into character, and of character into hope--and the hope that has become our joy does not (as happiness must for those who depend up on it) disappoint us.”

“Mutuality is accomplished by two whole persons; and if each partner truly intends to be but the fraction of a relationship (thinking my whole makes up half of us) he or she will soon discover that these halves do not fit perfectly together. The mathematics can work only if each subtracts something of himself or herself, shears it off, and lays it aside forever. There will come, then, a moment of shock when one spouse realizes, ‘you won’t want the whole of me? Not the whole of me, but only a part of me, makes up the whole of us?” P 45”