If you know me, you can acknowledge my obsession with books. But if you really know me, you know how much I love Sarah Ban Breathnach, truly one of my most favorite authors. I've started reading her books again, because they give me such a lift and remind me to have a more grateful heart.

Ty hasn't been feeling well, so he fell asleep early. Back home at my apartment now, I'm listening to Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic" and perusing some of my favorite books, Sarah's included, and wanted to share some of my favorite thoughts (and probably songs as the playlist moves on).

"Wilderness--a bleak, numbing word that instantly calls to mind a feeling of hopelessness, nothingness, barrenness, and most of all, a sense of powerlessness. There's a reason that the biblical expression "the voice of one crying in the wilderness' has come to mean abject abandonment. You can wail and gnash your teeth all you want, but in the Wilderness no one hears your heart tearing asunder except God, who presumably sent you there. Ironically, according to ancient legend, the world Wilderness didn't conjure up a place of punishment, but rather a place of learning, spiritual growth, understanding, healing, and accomplishment. It referred to a wellspring of Divine energy in the guise of despair, hardship, and pain; your experience in the Wildernes was designed to prepare or propel you toward your destiny. Or pry you loose from whatever was keeping you from it." - Sarah Ban Breathnach, Something More pg. 176


There's no such thing as chance
And what to us seems merest accident
Springs from the deepest source of destiny
--Schiller