Healing the Wounded Heart Quotes

“Hope refuses to believe that the inevitable is so. What has always been and can’t change is an illusion; if anything is true, it is that change is inevitable, not that the inevitable will not change. But evil caustically replies, Nonsense. It is what it is. You will only be more discouraged and frustrated until you accept reality.”
― Dan B. Allender, Healing the Wounded Heart: The Heartache of Sexual Abuse and the Hope of Transformation

“Grief is freeing, but regret is the cul de sac of despair.”
― Dan B. Allender, Healing the Wounded Heart: The Heartache of Sexual Abuse and the Hope of Transformation

“How do we hold the paradox of giving up our life in order to find it? I believe Chesterton is saying that the more we open our heart to both heartache and hope, the more we can look death in the face and say, “Where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55). We must love all that bears the mark of life: the sound of an owl finch and its call that sounds like the meowing of a kitten. We must love Bach, Ethiopian berbere, and the smell of freshly baked bread. Life is teeming with goodness. We must also experience death and powerlessness, but darkness will not win. Life and love will have the final word.”
― Dan B. Allender, Healing the Wounded Heart: The Heartache of Sexual Abuse and the Hope of Transformation

“Evil knows that to the degree we are discouraged and defeated, we will not fight for survival. To not fight is to capitulate, to surrender. Evil doesn’t primarily want to kill us; instead, it wants us to spend our lives in worry or regret. Its design is to take life from life, or in other words, to kill hope. It loves for us to sour ourselves through ruminating on failure and obsessing over the disasters we anticipate in the future. Both regret and worry sap creativity and plunge the heart into the slough of despair.”
― Dan B. Allender, Healing the Wounded Heart: The Heartache of Sexual Abuse and the Hope of Transformation

“Jesus intends to stand against every accusation and claim made against us. When we are assaulted by a half-truth contemptuously hurled at us, he intends to take the blow first. His death is a covering against every assault of contempt and every claim of debt owed. The more freedom we gain from evil’s brutal lies, the clearer we will see how past events have been used to capture and kill parts of our heart.”
― Dan B. Allender, Healing the Wounded Heart: The Heartache of Sexual Abuse and the Hope of Transformation