More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
It was a lot for a six-and-a-half-year-old boy, she thought, and held him closer. Then she felt Will hug her from behind, laying his cheek against the nape of her neck, and nothing else mattered.
Is that what it takes to feel like this? To come so close to death, you want to burst for joy because you feel so glad to be alive?
Can happiness be that easy? Finding little joys in the worst moments?
“Our family is home. Wherever we’re together is home. This is home. It doesn’t matter if we’re on the farm or in the beautiful green valley as long as we’re together.”
Laughter was like a hot shower for the soul after a long, cold day.
If you must look back, try to find the beauty and the benefit in every cruelty done to you. If you must think about the future, try to have no expectations about it.
praying was where you talk to God. And meditation was where you listen.”
Rese was pretty and smart and very funny. She did not care what other people thought of her when she did crazy things like this. She was . . . well . . . free in a way that Adeline had never known before. Like Emil said, you know freedom when you see it.
During the entire trek out of Ukraine, her faith had stayed strong, and she’d believed that God walked at her side. Now, she realized it was Emil who had really walked at her side, and with him gone, she felt abandoned, thrown to the wind, forgotten by grace.
“The problem is, most people get frustrated when they do not find what they are looking for or don’t do what they are trying to do easily and in a short period of time. They give up after a couple of failures or a couple of years of struggle. The dream that once lit up their heart now begins to darken it, and their thinking changes. They lose faith far too early. They believe far too early that their dream can never exist. The problem is they haven’t stayed true to their heart long enough for the Almighty One to move the moon and stars so the dream they seek can come into being. Once disbelief
...more
Love life like it is a miracle every day, every moment, and dream in a way that helps others,
Instead, he tried to be grateful for the bunk and the dank room because he was not lying out in the snow; and to be thankful for the dying men around him because they reminded him that he was still alive, that he still had opportunities, that he was going to find a way to escape.
At some point, you’ll have to decide where you want to spend your life—in slavery or in freedom—and if you choose freedom, you’ll have to run through a no-man’s-land with bullets zinging around your head to get there. I don’t think there’s any way around it. If we want that life, we’ll have to risk death for it.
Adeline surged with an emotional energy that she’d never felt before and never would again, a mother determined to save her children, a wife desperate to hold her husband again, a woman fueled by fear, by love, and by prayer.
He’d survived the worst that life could throw at him, and those trials and his time with Corporal Gheorghe had changed him, made him stronger and humbler and more aware of the power of dreams and the magic of life all around him. He appreciated every sunrise and every sunset and was grateful to the Almighty for every gift he was given in between.
“Our life is a miracle, Emil!” “One miracle after another,” Emil said, and kissed Adeline like it was the very first time.
Was the world, the universe, all one entity? Was God inside him? Was he inside God? Emil still struggled with those questions. But the Romanian was right about one thing: all it took to have a good life was a cheerful, grateful mood, a clearly envisioned, heartfelt dream, and the willingness to chase it with an unwavering belief in its eventual realization.
Emil asked himself why some people were willing to uproot and chase freedom at all costs while others were content to stew in their misery.
“You know, I used to think life was something that happened to me,” she told one old friend as she was beginning to fail. “But now, I know life happened for me.”
“Don’t chew on the bad things that happen to you, dear. Try to see the beauty in every cruelty. It sets you free. Forgive hurt if you want to heal a broken heart. Try to be grateful for every setback or tragedy, because by living through them, you become stronger. I see the hand of God in that. “I also see his hand in every right step and every wrong one we took in our lives, all somehow moving us forward, but sometimes around and around and around like a leaf I’ve always remembered seeing blowing in the wind the first day of the Long Trek.
“This is an American story, an immigrant story, a spiritual and universal story. May we all dare to chase such dreams, experience such grace, and lead such miraculous lives.”
