Atlas Girl Quotes

“God’s love for us often looks like suffering. It often looks like the silhouette of the cross, when in fact it is the sun beyond that silhouette, rising on the third day.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“It just takes one person, believing in you. It just takes one person, loving on you. That's all it takes to change the world”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home In The Last Place I Thought To Look

“Begging God, then, today, to show me how to make wobbly steps in this walk of the Spirit. To know when to move and when to stand still.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“I know God is here in the nature and the people, but more than that, he is within me. The kingdom of heaven is where I belong. It is where all of my journeys have been taking me. And no place on earth can match the welcome that is found in God’s arms.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“And the more I chose love, the more I experienced Jesus.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“I wait for forgiveness to find its place in me. To root its deep, beautiful tendrils within the dirt of my soul because there is no justice in forgiveness. There’s only grace. And grace makes way for peace.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“And maybe suffering on behalf of another is the greatest gift of all, because it offers a kind of love that sacrifices. That sees beyond today. This, the hardest thing for a parent to do. To not fix. To just let. For then we have to trust God to do the healing, while we simply hold. But in the end I know my children are worth the feeling, that they are worth this moment, and that love is real in a painful kind of way, the kind that makes a person double over, the kind that puts a Savior on a cross.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“To be born again; to become like infants in God’s womb, entirely dependent, utterly quiet, never alone. Wordless communication, unspeakable love, cushioned against the world’s blows. Grace within the belly of our Maker.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“It’s an honor—not a chore—to serve someone who reflects the very face of God.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“God was saying I had chosen not to hear him. I had chosen not to listen. So I came home and decided to take a vacation from my worries. I was going to watch as God took care of me. I would live in the moment, thinking only about current events and choosing to enjoy myself, to rise above my circumstances and simply “be.” Why, I wonder, does God make us capable of fear and worry? Why does he let us go through such pain? And then it comes to me. It takes going through hell to appreciate heaven. And on earth we have a choice. We can experience heaven on a daily basis; we can surrender our worries and let our minds and souls be flooded with peace, knowing someone divine is taking care of us. Or we can hold on to control, for fear of letting go and letting God. It’s not about dying and someday going to heaven, it’s about inviting heaven into our everyday existence. Forgiving. Redeeming what is lost. Trusting. Letting go. Living now.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“take a vacation from my worries. I was going to watch as God took care of me. I would live in the moment, thinking only about current events and choosing to enjoy myself, to rise above my circumstances and simply “be.” Why, I wonder, does God make us capable of fear and worry? Why does he let us go through such pain? And then it comes to me. It takes going through hell to appreciate heaven. And on earth we have a choice. We can experience heaven on a daily basis; we can surrender our worries and let our minds and souls be flooded with peace, knowing someone divine is taking care of us. Or we can hold on to control, for fear of letting go and letting God. It’s not about dying and someday going to heaven, it’s about inviting heaven into our everyday existence. Forgiving. Redeeming what is lost. Trusting. Letting go. Living now.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knows us before we are. Before knitting us in our mother’s womb, and it’s this knowing that keeps us from getting lost. It’s this being known that is the compass that guides us home.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“This is marriage; to be the stronger, when the other is weak. And so, a beautiful tug and pull; a dance in the wilderness, two lovers leaning hard into each other in black air, leaning on all that is good and faithful, and seeking the light—the morning light—in each other’s eyes.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“That’s all we ever need, isn’t it? To know how much we are loved. To know the lengths to which someone will go. It just takes one person, believing in you. It just takes one person, loving on you. That’s all it takes to change the world.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“Reading Hannah Whitall Smith’s book, The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life. Our task is to trust God to be working in us; to make us gradually more like Jesus. So that we don’t grumble about what happens, we work with God in that we allow him to mould us. He directs our paths and if we accept his will with peace and thankfulness he will transform us into his Son’s image. Therefore—I’ll try not to grumble when things go wrong; when life gets difficult; when people misunderstand me or don’t agree with our”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“Behind all of your stories, is your mother's story, because hers is where yours began”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home In The Last Place I Thought To Look

“To be vulnerable, and it’s only in being vulnerable that we can be fully loved.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“The money has been returned, and yet it’s God’s. It’s been returned and yet it was never ours in the first place. The closer we let ourselves get to Jesus, the more we learn the way he sees. We learn the way he loves. And we learn the way he gives. And he never stops giving and we never stop receiving.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“Sometimes, for a split second, life’s problems just sort of line up and solve themselves and you see the hand of Jehovah Jireh so gloriously and heavily. Just for a second. Like God shining on Moses’s face and then he’s gone, but still, the shine. And for months afterward your face is alight.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“I think of Jesus’s legs cracked and bleeding on the Easter-cross and I see in him the foolishness of a weak God, then, three days later, legs strong and whole, standing in the garden before Mary and Thomas and the disciples telling the world to touch and see, he is God. And he is power. And he is trustworthy. In spite of appearing foolish and weak.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“passports. No matter how many flights I take, no matter how many countries I visit, if God’s will and heart are not my ultimate destination than I am to be more pitied than anyone.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. Maya Angelou”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“I’ve often felt very distant from God. Detached. Like he doesn’t hear, doesn’t see, doesn’t listen. This morning I read Psalm 22:2, “My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer.” I thought to myself, Exactly.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“And sometimes it takes disappointment to remember that this world is not our home.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“telling me he loves me. Telling me nothing can erase that love. That nothing I’ve done in the past can wreck my future so long as he is in it.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“God’s plan is never just about us.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself. Madeleine L’Engle”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“I grumble at God and wonder if He loves me, just because things don’t go right. If everything always went right I’d have no sympathy for those who suffered and I’d have no excuse for not being joyful all the time—but I bet I’d still grumble. This way it’s a test of character and faith, to see how I react to disappointments, crying kids, sickness, disturbed nights, etc.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“but hurt people have sharp edges and inadequacy flings arrows.”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look

“When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve. Ernest Hemingway”
― Emily T. Wierenga, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look