My Wife Has Lived With At Least

Because Arrogance Is Born In Personal Vanity, Arrogant People Are Driven Without Mercy. They Can Never Get Enough Power To Fill The Soul's Needs Or Enough Respect To Overcome The Fear That They Deserve Less Than They Are Getting.

Forgiving Is Tough. Excusing Is Easy. What A Mistake It Is To Confuse Forgiving With Being Mushy, Soft, Gutless, And Oh, So Understanding. Before We Forgive, We Stiffen Our Spine And We Hold A Person Accountable. And Only Then, In Tough-minded Judgment, Can We Do The Outrageously Impossible Thing: We Can Forgive.

God Is The Original, Master Forgiver. Each Time We Grope Our Reluctant Way Through The Minor Miracle Of Forgiving, We Are Imitating His Style. I Am Not At All Sure That Any Of Us Would Have Had Imagination Enough To See The Possibilities In This Way To Heal The Wrongs Of This Life Had He Not Done It First.

Forgiving Does Not Usually Happen At Once. It Is A Process, Sometimes A Long One, Especially When It Comes To Wounds Gouged Deep. And We Must Expect Some Lapses...some People Seem To Manage To Finish Off Forgiving In One Swoop Of The Heart. But When They Do, You Can Bet They Are Forgiving Flesh Wounds. Deeper Cuts Take More Time And Can Use A Second Coat.

The Difference Between Guilt And Shame Is Very Clear--in Theory. We Feel Guilty For What We Do. We Feel Shame For What We Are. A Person Feels Guilt Because He Did Something Wrong. A Person Feels Shame Because He Is Something Wrong. We May Feel Guilty Because We Lied To Our Mother. We May Feel Shame Because We Are Not The Person Our Mother Wanted Us To Be.