Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)

by Rebecca Ross

her heart so heavy it felt bruised against her ribs.

“It feels like wearing shoes that are too small,” she whispered. “With every step, you notice it. It feels like blisters on your heels. It feels like a lump of ice in your chest that never melts, and you can only sleep a few hours at a time, because you’re always wondering where they are and those worries seep into your dreams. If they’re alive, or wounded, or sick. Some days you wish that you could take their place, no matter the cost. Just so you can have the peace of knowing their fate.”

I think we all wear armor. I think those who don’t are fools, risking the pain of being wounded by the sharp edges of the world, over and over again.

to be vulnerable is a strength most of us fear.

But I realize that people are just people, and they carry their own set of fears, dreams, desires, pains, and mistakes. I can’t expect someone else to make me feel complete; I must find it on my own.

And I think I was always writing for myself, to sort through my loss and worry and tangled ambitions. Even now, I think about how effortless it is to lose oneself in words, and yet also find who you are.

a shadow you carry in your soul—but it will become fainter as your life becomes brighter.

I don’t like attempting things that I think I’ll fail at,

Some moments, I feel okay. And then the next, I’ll be struck by a wave of sadness that makes it hard to breathe.

this weighted sense of peace she felt as she gave the earth seed after seed, knowing they would soon rise. It quieted her fears and her worries, to let the soil pass through her fingers, to smell the loam and listen to the birdsong in the trees above. To let something go with the reassurance it would return, transformed.

Even when the world seems to stop, threatening to crumble, and the hour feels dark as the siren rings … it isn’t a crime to feel joy.