Sue Monk Kidd Quotes

What has happened to our ability to dwell in the unknowing, to live inside a question and coexist with the tensions of uncertainty? Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? What has happened to patient unfolding, to endurance? These things are what form the ground of waiting.

All my life I've thought I needed someone to complete me, now I know I need to belong to myself.

The most significant gifts are the ones most easily overlooked. Small, everyday blessings: woods, health, music, laughter, memories, books, family, friends, second chances, warm fireplaces, and all the footprints scattered throughout our days.

When you can't go forward, and you can't go backward, and you can't stay where you are without killing off something deep and vital in yourself, you are on the edge of creation.

That's the sacred intent of life, of God--to move us continuously toward growth, toward recovering all that is lost and orphaned within us and restoring the divine image imprinted on our soul.

You forgive what you can, when you can. That's all you can do.To forgive does not mean overlooking the offense and pretending it never happened. Forgiveness means releasing our rage and our need to retaliate, no longer dwelling on the offense, the offender, and the suffering, and rising to a higher love. It is an act of letting go so that we ourselves can go on.

We become what we pay attention to.

The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.

You create a path of your own by looking within yourself and listening to your soul, cultivating your own ways of experiencing the sacred and then practicing it. Practicing until you make it a song that sings you.

I found that I could not climb my way up to God in a blaze of doing and performing. Rather, I had to descend into the depths of myself and find God there in the darkness of troubled waters.

I have noticed that if you look carefully at people's eyes the first five seconds they look at you, the truth of their feelings will shine through for just an instant before it flickers away.

The awakening passed from simple recognition of my need for God at the center of my life, to a depth where the will is stirred And that is a deeper place by far. That is the place of response, of unifying one's heart, mind, soul and feet around a decision.

Our earlier lives aren't wrong, they are just pre-construction. Our lives are meant to unfold, to evolve, and that's good. The only wrong thing, perhaps, is permanently hesitating on the verge of courage, which would prevent this process from taking place.

I believe in the goodness of imagination.

You have untold strengths and resources inside. You have your glorious self.

God is at the tip of our scalpels, our screwdrivers, our computer terminals, our dust rags, our vacuum cleaners, our pencils and pens. He is with us in our wheelchairs, or on our hospital beds, when all we can do is sit or lie flat. When we envision Him and His purpose in what we do, then we begin to grow aware of His presence in the middle of it. We are able to engage in our inward conversation with Him as we work, naturally, without strain. He becomes our partner, our collaborator.

some things don't matter much. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart--now, that matters. The whole problem with people is...they know what matters, but they don't choose it...The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.

In a way, humans are not made of skin and bones as such, as we're made of stories.

The monk at St. Meinrad took his hands and placed them on my shoulders, peered straight into my eyes and said, ‘I hope you’ll hear what I’m about to tell you. I hope you’ll hear it all the way down to your toes. When you’re waiting, you’re not doing nothing. You’re doing the most important something there is. You’re allowing your soul to grow up. If you can’t be still and wait, you can’t become what God created you to be.

I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don't even know it.

I eventually found that the soul is more than an immortal commodity to win and save. It is the repository of the inner divine, the truest part of us.

Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.

It's your time to live, don't mess it up.

The whole problem with people is they don't know what matters and what doesn't.

Sometimes, in order to say yes to what matters most, I must say no to good things.