“I didn’t know that I could balance the conscientiousness they taught with honoring my wants and needs, so I often orbited my desires around the comfort of others. And then when I was alone, I didn’t know my own voice.”

“Being a leader who’s nice enhances your other good qualities, increasing the impact you have on those around you, and it’s deeply near-sighted to underestimate that.”

“Everything I was doing was to make my job more sustainable for me, but all it did was make the (what I now know was) inevitable end less jarring.”

“With no other tools at my disposal…I grabbed the old metal teal broom, bristles splayed out like a Thanksgiving turkey, and ready to do the bidding of whoever wielded it.”

“Perhaps I was attempting to craft the environment we organically created, but I was less tidy, less rule-bound, less moral.”

“Being shown a glimpse of your wounds reminded me of my own, discarded and untouched.”

“And then what I imagined became reality, but we romanticize what we don’t know deeply.”

“I wiped the sweat clean off with the back of my hand. I heaved and leaned down towards the plastic billowing in the wind once more. It might’ve looked graceful had I not felt their challenge radiating like a polluting pulse.”

“I’m trying to be honest with myself (and you, Reader) about this and frankly, it’s uncomfortable. I don’t like writing about him because I want to avoid honesty.”

“You will find that you have pieces that will always be tucked away in your back pocket, available to revisit like an old holiday letter…but you won’t know the pieces that are inextricably linked with the past, unable to be resurfaced.”

“There are people who’re habitually careless with their words and actions.”

“But what happens when we morph so far into others that we don’t know who we are or where our identity lies?”

“I’d been ignoring my small harshness towards God so much that I was sacrificing our big relationship on an altar of comfort-motivated avoidance, shallow legalism, and pride.”

“Joy picks you up off the floor, shows you tomorrow’s sunlight, and allows you to experience that sunlight today.”

“A significant part, and perhaps the most significant part, of any parent’s role is to represent what their children’s relationship with God can look like.”