Fiercehearted Quotes

“Always remember to love the Giver more than the gifts.”
― Holley Gerth, Fiercehearted: Live Fully, Love Bravely

“Jesus said we all must deny ourselves, and perhaps this is part of what he meant. That at some point in our lives, we must give up trying to become someone he never intended us to be. We must surrender our big illusions and egos. We must discover that we are small and ordinary—and both are really quite wonderful.”
― Holley Gerth, Fiercehearted: Live Fully, Love Bravely

“Faced with this reality, I decide, in the end, this is what matters: conflict is inevitable; kindness is optional. If we share life long enough with someone, anyone, then there will be misunderstandings and toes stepped on or circumstances that stretch us apart like snappy rubber bands. What matters is not if that happens but what we do when it does. Do we go searching for the perfect people with whom we will never experience such things, forgetting this is impossible because we ourselves are not such a person? Or do we forgive, even if it’s sometimes slowly and from a heart-safe distance, believing the way back to each other can start with the smallest of steps.”
― Holley Gerth, Fiercehearted: Live Fully, Love Bravely

“here’s to whatever brings us to the point where we can no longer stay the same. Here’s to keeping the front door open. Here’s to doing the brave, hard thing. Here’s to being fiercehearted.”
― Holley Gerth, Fiercehearted: Live Fully, Love Bravely

“But there comes a point when what’s empowering becomes discouraging. When we begin looking at others not for inspiration but to compare. When what we find no longer feels like tools that will help but stones that weigh us down. When that happens, it’s time to pause and remember why we’re doing this thing in the first place. And if we’ve made it this far, we usually know. After we remind ourselves of the why, we can ask, “What do I want this to look like in my life?”
― Holley Gerth, Fiercehearted: Live Fully, Love Bravely

“Brother Lawrence did so in the kitchen of a French monastery over three hundred years ago. Instead of resenting the monotony and smallness of his chores, Brother Lawrence decided to seek God’s presence always and in everything. He writes, “Men invent means and methods of coming at God’s love, they learn rules and set up devices to remind them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the consciousness of God’s presence. Yet it might be so simple. Is it not quicker and easier just to do our common business wholly for the love of him?”2”
― Holley Gerth, Fiercehearted: Live Fully, Love Bravely

“It seems there are thousands of stories we could be living. And in this world of option and opportunity we believe we could somehow pick any or all of them. We call this freedom, yet in so many ways it can become a trap. Because instead of living fully in the reality I’ve been given, I’m often somewhere else, lost on the pages of “what might have been” or “what could be.” I want someone else’s story—a book with a more enticing cover.”
― Holley Gerth, Fiercehearted: Live Fully, Love Bravely

“I think later of how what we so often need is not a big break but to be broken. To come to the place where we are disappointed by all we've been chasing, when we're humbled and exhausted, hungry and fed up with ourselves. When we finally throw what we have grasped in our hands against the wall so that it shatters to pieces. Because only then are our hands empty again. Empty to be truly filled.”
― Holley Gerth, Fiercehearted: Live Fully, Love Bravely

“My refusal to ever have conflict with others meant I was in conflict with myself.”
― Holley Gerth, Fiercehearted: Live Fully, Love Bravely