“All I’m saying is that I don’t want to sort of fall in love with fifty different people. I’d rather find one person and fall completely, deeply in over my head.”
— Anna White
“I’m broken, but I have to learn how to live. I feel stuck together with scotch tape, like after any breath everything could come apart. If it does, if it all comes undone, I think I’ll fall down and never rise again.”
— Anna White
“Every day is a new beginning, the building of a habit. Every action is a step in some direction. There is no pause in living.”
— Anna White
“Truth: last week I online shopped too much. Then I ate 2 pounds of jelly beans to feel better about that. In fact, while I was trying to read soul-nourishing things all I could think about was shopping and jellybeans. Points to the monkey mind.”
— Anna White
“The road to the heart is not a long, linear path, but this turning. There is no race or competition, just me and God going deeper, carving a canyon to the soul.”
— Anna White
“After giving it some thought, I’ve decided to name my monkey mind Ricky Bobby. I was thinking about Latin names like Javier, but I don’t want to make my jumping, distractable self sound mysterious and sexy. Ricky Bobby makes me laugh. A name like that seems silly, not strong. Just a goofy little thing that doesn’t know what to do with its hands, likes to go fast, and loves tiny, infant, baby Jesus.”
— Anna White
“I grew up believing Christians didn’t just believe in Jesus. To be saved, people had to look and speak a certain way. They followed a long list of nots to ensure their holiness. They fit the mold. They followed the rules.”
— Anna White
“I was taught growing up not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, to withdraw myself from the sinful ‘others’. But we are all others. We are all sinners in someone’s eyes.”
— Anna White
“I can’t say for sure if I’m better off, since I have no way of knowing what would have been. I could have traveled to exotic places and kissed exotic men in the moonlight. Or I could have ended living alone in a dumpy apartment with the flesh eating virus I contracted from a public toilet. Could haves are always a great unknown.”
— Anna White
“The first night in the hospital with a snuffling baby girl, I learned that my family was not the only thing that had expanded. There was now a whole new world of opportunities for judgment and self-doubt.”
— Anna White
“My husband says this longing for isolation is not a good quality, that if I wanted to be a hermit I should have moved to the West Coast and adopted a lot of cats, not gotten married and had children that demand to be fed several times a day.”
— Anna White
“A basic reality of life is that we all struggle. We hurt and have hurt other people. We all feel lost sometimes. This isn’t all we are, but it is a part of who we are. The only question I have when I’m with someone is, “Can they admit it? And will they let me admit it too?”
— Anna White
“I love that there’s no cutoff where we get labeled and sent off to a home for hopeless, cranky, depressives. Every day is a new chance to listen longer and be braver and love more. We get to try again and again and again.”
— Anna White
“I doubt that anyone has a Damascus moment after experiencing discrimination. Most people seem to have shining moments of change after experiencing grace.”
— Anna White
“All of my secrets and scars and wishes and dreams can live together in this one body without shame, without blame, and without fear. I am all loved, all accepted, and all in service to God. In his eyes, regardless of what I did or didn’t do today, I am loved. I am His, so I am enough.”
— Anna White
“Being broken isn’t the worst thing. We can be mended and put together again. We don’t have to be ashamed of our past. We can embrace the history that gives us value, and see our cracks as beautiful.”
— Anna White
“I think this is the essence of life: to be willing circle back, to fall in deeper, to relearn what I thought I already knew.”
— Anna White
“Acts of love, for me, are leaps of bravery.”
— Anna White
“I believe in beauty. I believe in goodness. I believe in the power of turning: the other cheek, time, curve of the earth.”
— Anna White
“I want to share my story, and I want to know yours. I believe with all my heart that sharing our stories, the real, ugly, broken ones, is one of the most powerful things in the world, because to share our story we must first accept it. We must own it. We must stop running from it or shoving it into the corner when company comes over. To share our story is to admit that we’ve been changed.”
— Anna White
“The idea of practicing love is deeply appealing to me, because built right in is an acceptance of imperfection. There is an acknowledgment to myself that I am going to mess this up, an understanding that there is room to grow. Each of my failures just affirms the truth that we are all starting over and rising again.”
— Anna White
“I realized that I was okay with myself. I was quirky and withdrawn and loud, but I liked that. I smiled at strangers without thinking they were going to attack me and drag me into their cars. I went to doctors’ offices and touched magazines that had been touched by sick people.”
— Anna White
“Love has no demand of us but to keep practicing, to do the next hard thing. Love says, Come dear. Take the next step.”
— Anna White
“I want my heart to be the thin place. I don’t want to board a plane to feel the kiss of heaven. I want to carry it with me wherever I go. I want my fragile, hurting heart, to recognize fleeting kairos, eternal moments as they pass. I want to be my own mountain and my own retreat.”
— Anna White
“It is a beautiful and scary thing to sit open-handed and let all your plans float away like dust.”
— Anna White
“I’ve always let my imagination run free, but now I try to rein it in. Things never turn out the way I imagine, so I am letting them rest. Instead, I am holding just what is in my hand.”
— Anna White
“The God I serve is able to save us both. To give us the winning lottery ticket so all our money problems will go away. To mend our broken hearts. To bring us close to those we love. He is able. He is able. He is able.But even if He doesn’t, do not bow to bitterness. Do not fall down onto your broken pieces and let them cut you to ribbons. Even if He doesn’t do all that He is able to do, all that we wish He would do, He is good.”
— Anna White
“The griefs that have been hardest for me were the ones I didn’t recognize as griefs, because they came in what were supposed to be the best times of my life. No one whispered in my ear that the best times, the ones that change our lives, are woven with the thread of loss.”
— Anna White
“Christmas is such a time of struggle anyway, crammed with busy and hurry and the expectation that you will be joyful, no matter what. Then, if you’re like me, when you just sit quietly, just be, and let yourself feel what you feel, the guilt creeps in. Because you’re alive and the world is big, and you should be feeling some freakin’ Christmas spirit.”
— Anna White
“I am still not good enough. I am still not whole enough. I am still not pure enough. I am still weakness and sharp edges and broken, but He is good and pure and whole, all that I strive for but am not. I wake up every morning and I sit in silence and I choose to believe. I may speak. I may not. I let Him wrap up all my broken in to His grace. He takes me imperfect. This is the great mystery I never knew.”
— Anna White