Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage

“He’s your friend,” she texted back. “He’s your friend that you get to sleep with and wake up with. That’s what married life is at its most basic. A friend, your teammate, a person you trust and look forward to talking to, about anything. Someone who seems to really, really like you, who you like, too.”

Ninety percent of the time, this is the solution: Tell it. Cry if you can. If you can’t, sit in a dejected posture, hunched over, and stay with this awhile. It will shift, and become less acute.

I hate to be wrong, and I hate that I am wrong so often in so many ways, that my thinking is often defensive, judgmental, and skittish. (I have a thinking disorder. I once took a 20 Questions quiz about drinking but substituted thinking and I got most of them: Do you prefer to think alone? Do you hide your thinking from loved ones? Has thinking beg

Ali and I shared a struggle with perfectionism, the most toxic condition for the soul. The next most toxic is the ensuing and chronic contempt for oneself, the belief that one is secretly defective and less-than. The next is the obsession that one is right and better-than.

He said that when you first meet him, you’re meeting his bodyguard. I wrote it down and later taped it to my bathroom mirror, where all truth resides at least briefly. His bodyguard is smart and charming, and keeps people out. Deep inside, his true self is very human, which is to say beautiful and kind of a mess—needy, insecure, judgmental, like mo

When people know you too well, they eventually see your damage, your weirdness, carelessness, and mean streak. They see how ordinary you are after all, that whatever it was that distinguished you in the beginning is the least of who you actually are.

Yes, I’m odd, endlessly judgmental, secretly antisocial. Can you love me now?

I’d like to know if God gives us points for showing up or simply marks us present.

Maturity is retaining a modicum of grace when you do not get your own way.