Amianne Bailey

“The trauma someone else created is not your fault, but dealing with it is your responsibility.”
― Jen Hatmaker, Awake: A Memoir

“What if Mary Oliver is right and this is our one wild and precious life? What if we really don’t get any days back, and this whole life is ours to either grind our way through or throw our arms open for delight, for wonder, for joy and beauty and connection? What if we keep putting off happiness until later and later never comes? What if we hang doggedly on to 'surely this thing will eventually get better' but it doesn’t? Are we really just helpless recipients of stalled, drained, broken things, or do we have some agency? What if a life exists so full we would barely recognize it against our hustle and exhaustion and emptiness? Have we settled when we don’t have to? What if there is a different path, a different pace, a different peace? Apparently people can choose the life they want.”
― Jen Hatmaker, Awake

“It’s almost painful, the way little children just trustingly hold out their hearts for you to look at—the way they haven’t learned yet how to conceal what matters to them, even if it’s just chewing gum or a plush dolphin or plastic binoculars.”
― Catherine Newman, Sandwich

“most of what I was taught as gospel standards turned out to be optional values abandoned for power, greed, or lies. The church that raised me bears almost no resemblance to the one dehumanizing refugees, defending white supremacy, and aligning with a morally bankrupt autocrat. To put it succinctly: Organized religion, once my happy place, truly confuses me. I am adrift inside it for the first time in my life.”
― Jen Hatmaker, Awake: A Memoir