Quotes from Jan Karon

One of the things that makes a dead leaf fall to the ground is the bud of the new leaf that pushes it off the limb. When you let God fill you with His love and forgiveness, the things you think you desperately want to hold on to start falling away  . . . and we hardly notice their passing.

She was going to have to learn to trust God. Completely

At a time when his friends had stopped believing in Santa Claus, he was still believing in the powerful reality of the small tableau—in much the same way, he supposed, that a boy believes his action heroes to be living, and the battles on the parlor floor to be real.

Sometimes you have to gag on fancy before you can appreciate plain, th' way I see it.

I say, forget religion. What it's about, is the two of you, you and him. Nothing more, nothing less.

You love him, I can see it.' 'More than anything.' That alone should be enough, he thought, but of course it never is. Courage has to come in there somewhere, and perseverance and forbearance and patience and all the rest. A job of work, as Uncle Billy would say, but worth it and then some.

In any decision making, he'd learned to wait for the peace; it was heedless to make a move without it. There was no time for waiting, and yet waiting was imperative.

In everything give thanks. That was the lifeboat in any crisis. Over and over again he had learned this, and over and over again, he had to be reminded.

Flowers don't solve anything, but they can improve most everything.

You love him, I can see it." "More than anything." That alone should be enough, he thought, but of course it never is. Courage has to come in there somewhere, and perseverance and forbearance and patience and all the rest. A job of work, as Uncle Billy would say, but worth it and then some.

Professor Morgan had called [Dooley] 'a lad of few words.' That wasn't true. There were words spilling around in him all the time. Too many words. His problem was organizing them.

He didn't want to 'snuggle in' for the winter. He wanted to do something that got his blood up and skip the depression he sometimes suffered when 'earth stood hard as iron.

Lord, if this is Your answer, then You've got to help me do this thing. I know how You feel about fear, and I agree. But I'm scared stiff and You know it, and I'rn needing a generous hand-out of grace.

Lord,' he prayed, 'make me a blessing to someone today.

It's as important to marry the right life as it is the right person.

Julian of Norwich said as she suffered a devastating illness of her own: 'All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.' You may know that during her suffering she had gazed into the face of God, and out of that mighty encounter this truth was rendered for you, for all of us, for all time...

It's not the sort of thing romantics wish to hear, but I found that in the end, love must be a kind of discipline. If we love only with our feelings, we're sunk—we may feel love one day and something quite other the next. Soon after he came to live with me—he was eleven years old at the time—I realized I must learn to love with my will, not my feelings.

Maybe you done stepped aroun' th' Lord an' tryin' to lead th' way.

God answers all our heartfelt petitions. He may answer no, or yes, or wait, or maybe. Yet there's one prayer for which he has only one answer, and the answer is yes. 'Thy will be done.' There is a caveat. One must pray it with a surrendered heart.

And so I enjoyed the warm feelings, the stuff of the heart, when it was present between us, as it sometimes was, even in the beginning. And when it wasn't, there was the will to love him, something like . . . a generator kicking in, a backup.

The sin life in us must be transformed into the spiritual life." "How?" "Through sacrifice and obedience.

Love shall be our token

If he was going to find what he was seeking, he'd have to look, it was that simple. "Show me, Lord," he prayed aloud. "Lead me there and open my heart to Your wisdom….

We think we dare not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience and love that has been given to us, and that we must constantly be looking forward eagerly for the highest good.'