I'm Proud of You Quotes

“But the Esquire passage I found most poignant and revealing was this one: Mister Rogers' visit to a teenage boy severely afflicted with cerebral palsy and terrible anger. One of the boys' few consolations in life, Junod wrote, was watching Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

'At first, the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. He was so nervous, in fact, that when Mister Rogers did visit, he got mad at himself and began hating himself and hitting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room and talk to him. Mister Rogers didn't leave, though. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. He said, 'I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?' On his computer, the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said: I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?' And now the boy didn't know how to respond. He was thunderstruck... because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been prayed for. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn't know how to do it, he said he would, he said he'd try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn't talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean that God likes him, too.

As for Mister Rogers himself... he doesn't look at the story the same way the boy did or I did. In fact, when Mister Rogers first told me the story, I complimented him on being smart - for knowing that asking the boy for his prayers would make the boy feel better about himself - and Mister Rogers responded by looking at me first with puzzlement and then with surprise. 'Oh heavens no, Tom! I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers

“A friend is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping and, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“Fred wanted to know the truth of your life, the nature of your insides, and had room enough in his own spirit to embrace without judgment whatever that truth might be.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“We confess before Thee that if life were all smooth, there would be no patience; were it all easy, no courage, no sacrifice, no depth of character. We acknowledge before Thee that what is most admirable is the child of adversity and of courageous souls unafraid to face it.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“those of us with whom you have shared are all the richer because you've allowed us to walk in your inner garden," he wrote then. "And what a glorious garden it is!" Another time he wrote that he had discovered the South African word ubuntu, which means: I am because we are. "Isn't that lovely!" he said. "My identity is such that it includes you. I would be a very different person without you.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“What demons could withstand such a perfectly and consistently loving assault?”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“With grief there is, inevitably, some times of anger and you know, God can take our anger," he had told me that first day in his office. "I think God respects the fact that we would share a whole gamut of feelings.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“can often see our twilight zones better than we ourselves can. The way we are seen and understood by others is different from the way we see and understand ourselves. We will never fully know the significance of our presence in the lives of our friends. That's a grace, a grace that calls us not only to humility, but to a deep trust in those who love us. It is in the twilight zones of our hearts where true friendships are born.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“That morning, Fred, his two grandsons, and I found a pew near the front of the sanctuary. I remember consciously trying to freeze each surreal moment as I stood next to Fred and sang hymns, and watched him wrestle with his fidgety grandchildren in the pew. I can attest that even Mister Rogers became exasperated with little kids in church.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“Anything mentionable is manageable," he would say, inviting me to share further. Or he would paraphrase his good friend, the Roman Catholic priest and celebrated author Henri Nouwen, by saying, “That which is most personal is most universal.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“I still marvel that in that time of personal hell, I had been blessed by the human embodiment of heaven.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers