Sheila Gregoire > Sheila's Quotes

“Sex is not about genitalia. It’s about relationship. When God said ‘the two shall become one flesh,’ he didn’t mean it only physically.”
― Sheila Wray Gregoire, The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex: And You Thought Bad Girls Have All the Fun

“Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we rceive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best--if you like, it 'works' best--when, through long familiarity, we don't have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance.”
― C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

“In every possible instance Saint Paul begged Christians to restrain themselves to contain their carnal yearnings to live solitary and sexless lives on earth as it is in heaven. "But if they cannot contain " Paul finally conceded then "let them marry for it is better to marry than to burn." Which is perhaps the most begrudging endorsement of matrimony in human history.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“The importance of falling in love lies not in how it feels, but in what it perceives. And as always with our feelings, the key moral issue is how truthful the perception is... Falling in love is a sign that this might be someone with whom you could make a good marriage. Still, it's not enough, because the feeling is not always as perceptive as it should be... So falling in love is not the basis for a good marriage. It's not even a requirement. Marriage does not depend on falling in love; it depends on the promises you make to each other in your wedding vows and then spend a lifetime keeping. As many people have pointed out, you can't promise how you'll feel. But you can promise to cultivate a virtue, such as the virtue of love.”
― Phillip Cary, Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don't Have to Do

“You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“America does not know the difference between money and sex. It treats sex like money because it treats sex as a medium of exchange, and it treats money like sex because it expects its money to get pregnant and reproduce.”
― Peter Kreeft, How to Win the Culture War: A Christian Battle Plan for a Society in Crisis

“Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll is easy. True christianity…that's rebellion.”
― Alice Cooper

“If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once. But, of course, when people say, 'Sex is nothing to be ashamed of,' they may mean 'the state into which the sexual instinct has now got is nothing to be ashamed of'. If they mean that, I think they are wrong. I think it is everything to be ashamed of. There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“I call it Joy. 'Animal-Land' was not imaginative. But certain other experiences were... The first is itself the memory of a memory. As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult or find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton's 'enormous bliss' of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to 'enormous') comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what?...Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse... withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased... In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else... The quality common to the three experiences... is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again... I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.”
― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

“I was still young and the whole world of beauty was opening before me, my own officious obstructions were often swept aside and, startled into self-forgetfulness, I again tasted Joy. ... One thing, however, I learned, which has since saved me from many popular confusions of mind. I came to know by experience that it is not a disguise of sexual desire. ... I repeatedly followed that path - to the end. And at the end one found pleasure; which immediately resulted in the discovery that pleasure (whether that pleasure or any other) was not what you had been looking for. No moral question was involved; I was at this time as nearly nonmoral on that subject as a human creature can be. The frustration did not consist in finding a "lower" pleasure instead of a "higher." It was the irrelevance of the conclusion that marred it. ... You might as well offer a mutton chop to a man who is dying of thirst as offer sexual pleasure to the desire I am speaking of. ... Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is very often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.”
― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

“It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.”
― L.R. Knost, Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and Stages

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”
― Corrie Ten Boom, Clippings from My Notebook

“You can never learn that Christ is all you need, until Christ is all you have.”
― Corrie Ten Boom

“When one person is in control of another, love cannot grow deeply and fully, as there is no freedom.”
― Henry Cloud and John Townsend

“When two people are free to disagree, they are free to love. When they are not free, they live in fear, and love dies.”
― Henry Cloud and John Townsend

“When boundaries are not established in the beginning of a marriage, or when they break down, marriages break down as well. Or such marriages don't grow past the initial attraction and transform into real intimacy. They never reach the true "knowing" of each other and the ongoing ability to abide in love and to grow as individuals and as a couple-the long-term fulfillment that was God's design.”
― Henry Cloud and John Townsend

“And things don't change in a marriage until the spouse who is taking responsibility for a problem that is not hers decides to say or do something about it.”
― Henry Cloud, Boundaries in Marriage: Understanding the Choices That Make or Break Loving Relationships

“When you cease to blame your spous eand own the problem as yours, you are then empowered to make changes to solve your problem.”
― Henry Cloud, Boundaries in Marriage: Understanding the Choices That Make or Break Loving Relationships

“You get what you tolerate.”
― Henry Cloud, Boundaries in Marriage: Understanding the Choices That Make or Break Loving Relationships

“People who always want to be happy and pursue it above all else are some of the most miserable people in the world.”
― Henry Cloud, Boundaries in Marriage: Understanding the Choices That Make or Break Loving Relationships

“Couples often live out years of falsehood trying to protect and save a relationship, all the while destroying any chance of real relationship.”
― Henry Cloud, Boundaries in Marriage: Understanding the Choices That Make or Break Loving Relationships

“The idea of submission is never meant to allow someone to overstep another's boundaries. Submission only has meaning in the context of boundaries, for boundaries promote self-control and freedom. If a wife is not free and in control of herself, she is not submitting anyway. She is a slave subject to a slave driver, and she is out of the will of God.”
― Henry Cloud, Boundaries in Marriage: Understanding the Choices That Make or Break Loving Relationships

“God's solution for "I can't live that way anymore" is basically, "Good! Don't live that way anymore. Set firm limits against evil behavior that are designed to promote change and redemption. Get the love and support you need from other places to take the kind of stance that I do to help redeem relationship. Suffer long, but suffer in the right way." And when done God's way, chances are much better for redemption.”
― Henry Cloud, Boundaries in Marriage: Understanding the Choices That Make or Break Loving Relationships

“Divorce was never a thought...A life together forever was our only plan.”
― Fawn Weaver, Happy Wives Club: One Woman's Worldwide Search for the Secrets of a Great Marriage

“Like most complicated things where it's easy to get derailed, their marriage was successful because they mastered the basics. From that mastery they could weather anything.”
― Fawn Weaver, Happy Wives Club: One Woman's Worldwide Search for the Secrets of a Great Marriage

“Early in our marriage, we knew that once the kids were gone, we would still be married and have to work on it. So, we decided to pay it forward. We worked in the first year like we wanted things to be in the fiftieth year. I'm so glad we did.”
― Fawn Weaver, Happy Wives Club: One Woman's Worldwide Search for the Secrets of a Great Marriage

“You can either feed negative thoughts or you can starve the suckers.”
― Fawn Weaver, Happy Wives Club: One Woman's Worldwide Search for the Secrets of a Great Marriage

“Bonnie and Jerry told me they never run away fro disagreements. They face each one head-on. "By holding it in, you'll begin to slowly form a negative opinion of each other," Bonnie reasoned, "which means you can't work out what the disagreement is.”
― Fawn Weaver, Happy Wives Club: One Woman's Worldwide Search for the Secrets of a Great Marriage

“Creating a happy marriage begins with choosing the right spouse.”
― Fawn Weaver, Happy Wives Club: One Woman's Worldwide Search for the Secrets of a Great Marriage