I may not like all the circumstances from my past, but I can see I survived. God was with me. God has used parts of what I walked through for good. God used some of it to protect me. God has certainly used it to teach me lessons and make me more empathetic for others walking through hard things. And God has used some of it to position me for where I needed to be next.

Let your past rejection experiences work for you instead of against you by allowing them to help you sense the possible pain behind other people's reactions.

Most people are walking around with way more hurts from their past than we can ever imagine. Pretty much everyone has at some point been deeply hurt by someone. That's your "me too.

I didn't want to open up myself to yet another possible complicated disappointment. I reasoned, Walk away early so you don't have to suffer the pain of them falling away later. Some call that protecting yourself. But I knew in my case it was called letting past hurts hurt me all over again.

Girls who have the lingering whispers of rejection still echoing in the hollows of their soul rarely feel completely held safe. So

We project the lines of rejection we heard from our past on others and hold them accountable for words they never said. And worst of all, we catch ourselves wondering if God secretly agrees with those who hurt us.

We've survived what we feared. But can we survive the remembering? Memories are both our greatest treasures and our greatest sorrows.

If so, I guarantee when the enemy sees us he shakes with fear. He isn't scared of the judgmental soul shellacked with a fake sense of perfection. But the compassionate soul who has hurt deeply and come out loving? Yes, she is one of the superstars of God's grand story, and the one you want near you in the battles of life.

One question such events provoke is "What kind of God allows this to happen?" Another question we might ask is, "What kind of creatures are human beings that we should cause and allow this to happen?

the reason there are so many struggling women is because there were so many wounded girls.

Grief is a form of validation; it says the wound mattered. It mattered. You mattered.

Sorrow is not a stranger to any of us, though only a few have learned that is is not our enemy either.