You don't seem mad at all,' she said. But I am, although I'm undergoing a cure, because my problem is that I lack a particular chemical. However, while I hope that the chemical gets rid of my chronic depression, I want to continue being mad, living life the way I dream it, and not the way other people want it to be. Do you know what exists out there, beyond the walls of Villete?

The acomodador or giving-up point: there is always an event in our lives that is responsible for us failing to progress: a trauma, a particularly bitter defeat, a disappointment in love, even a victory that we did not quite understand, can make cowards of us and prevent us from moving on. As part of the process of increasing his hidden powers, the shaman must first free himself from that giving-up point and, to do so, he must review his while life and find out where it occured.

we all have one foot in a fairytale, and the other in the abyss

I cry intermittently, like a summer rain. I don't feel racked by the crying; in fact, it hydrates me. Then rage wells up in me, and I want to take a crowbar to all the cars in the neighborhood.

Despair itself can be hopeful if it is honest.

Some Christians feel embarrassed to admit doubts because they've been told that if they just had enough faith, they'd harbor no doubts. They worry that people might find out about their doubts and, consequently, think less of them as Jesus's followers. If we meet someone who struggles in this way, let's be ready to remind them that since God knows our doubts already, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by admitting them and asking for help.

The minister spoke in a well-modulated voice. Then we joined in singing. I could not help but make comparisons: the dirty prison dormitory, infection-ridden and filthy, the beds full of lice, and now this. Clean sheets and pillow cases and a spotless floor. The hoarse voices of the slave drivers and the mature, melodious voice of the minister. Only the singing was the same, for we had sung at Ravensbruck. Singing was one of the ways we kept up our courage.

We were shoved against the back wall. Thirty or forty people were all that could fit in. And still the soldiers drove women over the side, cursing, jabbing with their guns. Shrieks rose from the center of the car but still the press increased. It was only when eighty women were packed inside that the door thumped shut and we heard iron bolts driven into place.

I looked at my sister kneeling beside me in the light of burning Holland. "Oh Lord," I whispered, "listen to Betsie, not me, because I cannot pray for those men at all.

What do you do when you're in the valley? You remember what God has done. When he comforted you. When he guided you. When he answered your prayer exactly the way you wanted him to. And when he didn't do what you wanted, but sometime later you realized it was exactly what you needed. And you dare to believe that what he's done before, he will do again.

I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.

It is experiences of being overwhelmed, nearly destroyed, & surprisingly given life that empower us to pray & sing.