More Favorite Quotes

This post is #62 in a year-long series ... Through this series of posts I plan to share our family's experiences during our 17-year-old daughter's year-long battle with brain cancer, which began in February of 2008. My desire is to process through the events of that year from the perspective that a decade of time has brought ... for myself, really. But if you'd like to follow along, you're welcome to join me.

I wanted to share two more of my favorite quotes from Randy Alcorn's book "If God Is Good".

Here's the first:

"E. Stanley Jones wrote, 'Don't bear trouble, use it. Take whatever happens -- justice and injustice, pleasure and pain, compliment and criticism -- take it up into the purpose of your life and make something out of it. Turn it into testimony.'"

In other words, don't waste your storm.  If you've been following along, you know that Hannah prayed for a storm that God would use her.  And He has answered that prayer over and over.  Our desire is to never let her storm go to waste.  We firmly believe that our greatest sorrows will result in our greatest ministry. That is, if we allow God to use us.

And here's the second quote:

"Joni Eareckson Tada spoke of a woman, pregnant with a disabled child, who cried out in desperation to her husband, 'Things will never be the same.' His response? 'Maybe God doesn't want them to be the same.'"

Let that one soak in for a minute.  It's been so, so true in our experience over the last ten years.   I am a completely changed person from what I once was ... I'm really not sure if there is any part of me that is the same. And maybe that is just a little glimmer of what God's purpose has been through all of this.