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Inside the perfect shells is dim It’s through the cracks, the light comes in. . . .
I, more than most, should know that the most difficult battles are not the ones fought outside the armor, but the ones within it.
We are all warriors in our own time.
“The opposite of getting your hopes up is not harboring any,”
We must go by the name our Father has given us—Beloved—not by the names which others might seek to place upon us.”
If only true north were so easy to find in real life. I needed someone to show me which way to go, what to do now.
Folks my age remember when families used to do things together on vacation, instead of everyone just wandering off to watch separate TVs and use their cell phones.”
understood, in more ways than I could possibly say, what it was like to have your life floating in pieces.
What does a lighthouse do? I ask myself. It never moves. It cannot hike up its rocky skirt and dash into the ocean to rescue the foundering ship. It cannot calm the waters or clear the shoals. It can only cast light into the darkness. It can only point the way. Yet, through one lighthouse, you guide many ships. Show this old lighthouse the way.
I had that strange sense of yearning I sometimes felt when I saw sisters the way they were supposed to be.
Sandy moved to the space behind the coffee bar, pulled out a mud-covered box with glass lighthouses on top, and began washing it off. “It’s the strangest thing, what survived the storm and what didn’t. Like this little box.
“Well, you know how a river moves a mountain.” The words surprised me at first, but I knew where they were coming from. “Stone by stone,” she finished. “Iola told me that on the phone when she called to order those hummingbirds.”
Habit. I’d learned long ago that bragging about yourself would bring a smackdown.
Through one lighthouse, you guide many ships. Iola’s words whispered in my mind.
The funny thing about having people believe good things about you is that, without even realizing it, you want to make those things true. I wanted to be the person Brother Guilbeau saw, the person Sandy saw. I wanted to be worthy of their trust.
Some of the best things in your life come out of the worst.
and I had that feeling again. The feeling that, against the odds, all of this might work out after all.
I thought of the compass rose in the Hatteras library and my desperate wish that I could finally find true north in life.
They move around as the months of the year change, but the North Star never moves. It’s constant.” I saw it then. The North Star. True north. Not so impossible to find, once someone showed you where to look.
“If that ship yonder had stayed in harbor, it wouldn’t be wrecked on the beach, now would it?” Isabelle dips sideways in her step, her shoulder bumping mine so that I stumble into the tide. “If that ship had stayed in harbor, it couldn’t serve its purpose.”
You are not a God of endless harbors. Harbors are for stagnant sails and barnacled wood, but the sea . . . the sea is fresh rain and cleansing breeze and sleek sails. You are a God of winds and tides. Of journeys and storms and navigation by stars and faith.
You send the ships forth to serve their purpose, but you do not send them forth alone, for the sea is yours, as well. Be close to the sailors, Father. Wherever your tides may lead them.
Zoey glanced at me, probably thinking I’d find some way to make a run for the car before the prayer circle could form, but I didn’t. After weeks of sharing Iola’s prayers, journeying along as she offered up her hopes, her pain, her helplessness and confusion when life didn’t happen according to plan, it seemed natural.
Someday, when I could afford it, I’d buy the lighthouse box from Sandy—the one that had survived the storm—and make things more official.
Other people’s judgment doesn’t have any power unless you offer yourself up for trial, so don’t.”
I’d been offering myself up for trial my whole life, determining myself by what my parents said about me, whether men wanted me, whether the wives in Trammel’s circle accepted me. It had never even crossed my mind that I had a choice in the matter.
Remember that you are God’s, not theirs.
Like the beach glass, the wood was more beautiful because of its journey, because of the things it had been through.
I watched the light press through the cracks, gathering the colors of glass and mother-of-pearl. Inside the perfect shells is dim, It’s through the cracks, the light comes in.
My life was like that box. The best things in all t...
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The interior would never be fully dark because the struggle had cracked it, providing an avenue for the light.
There is no curse stronger than the power of love.”
“Fear builds walls instead of bridges. I want a life of bridges, not walls.”
“Besides, this is how the sisterhood works. We take care of each other. There are all different kinds of sisters, Tandi. Not just the ones you’re born with.”
one thing I’d learned from Iola’s letters was that miraculous answers to prayer were possible. The other thing I’d learned was that prayers aren’t always answered the way you expect.
After so many years of dysfunctional relationships that masqueraded as love, having someone offer real love and ask nothing for it in return was startling, sometimes too much to handle.
“Not everyone’s the same, Tandi. Not everyone is working the angles, looking for something. People can care about you just for you. Just because you’re worth caring about.”
‘Father, help these young people to see. Help them to show the world that our greatness is not in things we do for ourselves, but in things we do for others. In power that channels itself into kindness, in a hand outstretched in love.
Be with these determined students. Help them to believe, when the naysayers come, that you make all things possible.
Sisters are created not by blood but by love.
“There will always be another mystery. God is infinite.”
There was money and power on the other end of this struggle.
You ask those commissioners, and the audience, which house has the right to be here—the ones that are sliding off into the water or the one that has made it through every storm?
What do they think—the storms will never come? You build a house on the sand, the sand shifts eventually, Tandi Jo. You remember that.
“Dawn comes after the darkness, and with it the promise that what has been torn by the sea is not lost. All of life is breaking and mending, clipping and stitching,
“In the quiet after the storm, I hear you whisper, ‘Daughter, do not linger where you are. Take up your needle and your thread, and go see to the mending.
“By the world’s standards, she might not have been a person who really mattered, who was noteworthy. But by all the standards that matter most, she was an incredible human being. She touched the lives of people who never knew her. She asked for nothing in return
Another set of hands joined, and another and another, the applause slowly growing as Iola’s neighbors came out to meet her for the very first time.
“Yeah, I guess nobody told her you can get rid of the stains
Was this the box Iola had brought for repair when the shop first opened—the one that had helped to inspire so many of Sandy’s creations?
