Becoming Mrs. Lewis Quotes

“God might not fix things for me, but he would be with me in whatever waited ahead, that was clear.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“It is not hopeless,” he said with surety. “It is uncertain, and this is the cross God always gives us in life, uncertainty. But it is not hopeless.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“Much of what I’d done — mistakes, poems, manipulations, success and books and sex — had been done merely to get love. To get it. To answer my question: do you love me? . . . From that moment on, the love affair I would develop would be with my soul. [God] was already part of me; that much was clear. And now this would be where I would go for love — to the God in me. No more begging or pursuing or needing. Possibly it was only a myth, Jack’s myth [Til We Have Faces], that could have obliterated the false belief that I must pursue love in the outside world — in success, in acclaim, in performance, in a man.

The Truth: I was beloved of God.

Finally I could stop trying to force someone or something else to fill that role”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“What on earth would become of me if I should ever grow brave?”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“Maybe you aren’t doubting that God will do the best for you, but wondering how painful the best might be.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“If you knew all the answers, there'd be no need for trust, little one.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“Do you know the German word, sehnsucht," he asked.

"Yes," I answered. "The idea of an inconsolable longing for what we don't understand. You believe that longing is for God. Or heaven. And that we can confuse it with longing for someone or something else.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“Being a Christian isn’t what most think it is—all rules and regulations.” She clinked her glass with the red lipstick stain on the rim against mine. “It is all trust and surrender and transformation, at its best.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“We’re connected everywhere. Even before we met, we were all of us tied together with these funny little threads. I love those small hints that God brings people together and says, ‘Here you go. This one’s for you.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“Why did the everyday-ness of my life sometimes feel constricting, when the everyday-ness was everything”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“I’d once heard Jack say, or had I read it, that sometimes a soul would cry out, “Thy will be done” to God and other times, with fury say instead, “Fine, have it your way.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“You tolerate what you must when it becomes your reality.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“C. S. Lewis: Yes, Joy, I know that pain well. When we write the truth, there isn’t always a grand group applauding. But write it we must.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“If I attempt virtue it brings light to my life. If I indulge desires, I invite fog and confusion.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“I'd felt certain of his eros in the months before this unsterile kiss, but perhaps some small and niggling part of me had believed it pity or forbearance, that his medieval virtues compelled him to love me in my dying. But non! It was this wink of time when I whorled toward understanding, into and resting in the arms of love we shared--an uncommon and vulnerable combination of the four loves we'd traveled with and toward: agape, storge, philia, and now, unquestionably, eros. Our journey--riddled with both pain and joy--culminated in a kiss I would never have anticipated as the revelation it became, as the comfort and mastery of love.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“And now here you are, at peace in your Garden of Eden with your brother and your acreage and your students and your Inklings and you friends and your quaint town. All these things both inspire you and protect you. But a change might be in order. Not a change that disrupts, but one that expands." I paused. "Let new things touch your soul.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“if someone won’t write what we want to read, then we shall write it for ourselves.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“In a crack of my soul, during the untethered fear while calling for help, the sneaky Lion saw his chance, and God came in; he entered the fissures of my heart as if he’d been waiting a long time to find an opening. Warmth fell over me; a river of peace passed through me. For the first time in all my life, I felt fully known and loved. There was a solid sense that he was with me, had always been with me.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“I must know when it is enough. And I must trust God — again and again I was learning and relearning to trust the truth who had entered my sons’ nursery. The rusty and decrepit habit of trusting in only myself, only abiding in my own ability to make things happen, died hard and slow.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“We can't just surrender to our every desire. Man must have his principles and live by them regardless. Our nature must be controlled or it can ruin our lives.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“I've spent all of my life in an attempt to find truth and moral good and then to live it. I can't discard my moral habits for feelings, which are just that.
(The moral virtues)
They are my footholds for moral goodness. Morality is about choice.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“...waiting and longing are often the cheap fuel of desire.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“Whenever you'd like to talk about it, you know our friendship is big enough for even the sorrow.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“If only our house were as full of love as it was books...”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“Instead of changing my emotions, I needed to surrender them.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“Desperation fuels one to believe idiocy is insight”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“How can we know what has filtered into our work? This is precisely why we must be careful of what we read.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“How do you make a book? I want to make a book.” “First I try to write the very books that I want to read. I see my books in pictures. I watch them unfold, and then I write about it. I tell what I see, and then I fill in the gaps.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“I'm trying because I must.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

“The Truth: I was beloved of God. Finally I could stop trying to force someone or something else to fill that role.”
― Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis