Quotes from Mary E. DeMuth

Look how He's dusted me off and set me on my feet two hundred and fifty bazillion times. I'm fanatically in love with Him. So if this is true, I need to shed my need-for-everyone-to-like-me coat in favor of His robe of redemption, His mantle of humble submission.

When God wants to do an impossible task, He takes an impossible person and breaks her.

Jesus wastes none of our stories, even our tales of woe. He transforms them into epic adventures where we dare to face our past for the sake of our present.

When we think of other people as our center and fulfillment, we live frustrated lives.

The church is the hands and feet of Jesus, and it is our duty to continue the mandate to protect the innocent, while turning perpetrators in to the proper authorities.

To become more like Jesus we must understand that the only growth we can be in charge of is our own.

When I became a Christian as a teenager, I gathered a false belief to myself that my Christian friends would be my forever friends. Surely, since we both loved Jesus and followed Him, we would always be in each other's lives. No one would hurt the other -- because Jesus! It didn't take long for that theory of mine to be tested by reality.

The roadblocks to growth and joy come when we forget the bigness of God & instead make people bigger than He is.

Remember the nature of knowing insider information. It's like a drug. It makes you feel both superior and special. But what if those rumors are false? And even if they are true, you didn't experience them firsthand, and there is most likely a slant to the story you know nothing about.

When I've been in my dramatic states, friends who look beyond my spiraling downward are quick (and kind) to remind me of what is good in my life. They tell me the truth. This world is not all about me, nor am I just about to slip off the precipice of sadness. They help me see the blessings in the mess, the beauty underlying the mayhem. And when I have a dramatic friend, I can also offer this same perspective.

I want to live today in anticipation of what you will do next instead of constantly complaining about what isn't pristine in my life.

The church is not a place for perfection. It is, and should be, a haven of protection.

I realized that what I feared the most had materialized, yet I survived.

Money is a cheap but powerful substitute for Jesus, and wielding money is intoxicating, but it won't usher in the kingdom of God, nor will it ensure eternal treasures.

We are to be agents of His great upside down Kindgom, where the outcasts are listened to, the broken are given dignity, and those suffering under the weight of sexual exploitation are rescued and healed.

A perpetrator may have hurt someone for a few minutes of his/her life and may even regret it, but the survivor lives with the pain, triggers, shame and fear for a lifetime.

Sometimes we control our family members because we idolize and idealize our perfect plan over the journey that God has laid out for them. (p. 56)

Why must we cling to those who walk away instead of granting freedom? We must give the same liberty God gives to prodigals-an ability to let them go-or we'll be perennially bound to others for our happiness and effective service.

When Jesus isn't our everything, our enough, we pursue every other thing that fills.

That's where spiritual warfare begins—leaving our own methods of filling our gaping holes at the well and allowing Jesus to fill every thirsty, needy place with His Living Water.

As I look back over my mountains of growth and compare them to the molehills where I stagnated, community often made the difference.

That's the crux of my prayer for you as you walk through difficult relationship -- that you would begin to see God's storytelling in your life even in the midst of pain and bewilderment.

So much growth can come in discord. The pain we walk through can become a catalyst to push us toward God.

This same Jesus, though, didn't say we had to be in relationship with everyone. We are not to 'throw [our] pearls to pigs.' (See Matthew 7:6.) He didn't deeply entrust his heart to Pharisees. You see him slipping through the throng of people bent on killing him. Often he withdrew from crowds in order to be with his Father. His is a story of connection with others, yes, but it's also a reminder that relationships don't come with an easy-to-understand blueprint.