It's Not Supposed to Be This Way Quotes

“Understand that no time showing up and bringing compassion to another human is ever a waste of time. Rather, it's our chance to bring context, purpose, and meaning to all of life. Quiet moments of compassion are epic moments of battle.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Disappointment isn’t proof that God is withholding good things from us. Sometimes it’s His way of leading us Home.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Dangerous desires birthed inside our unsettled disappointments are nothing but a setup for a takedown.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“And in that you will finally find the why. Why did this happen? Because there’s someone else in the world who would drown in their own tears if not for seeing yours. And when you make one other human simply see they aren’t alone, you make the world a better place.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Or maybe you’ve been watching everyone else in your life find love, walk down the aisle, and start the life you’ve dreamed of for yourself. Then a few months ago you met someone who was everything you’ve been hoping for. You clicked with them. You told your friends you thought this might be the one. And then this week you felt that person pulling back. It’s hard to understand. You feel panicked. But the more you press in, the more distance you feel between the two of you. There are thousands of scenarios that evoke these feelings of uncertainty, fear, and exhaustion from life not being like you thought it would be. Whatever your situation is, you probably feel like you can’t change it, but you still have to live through the realities of what’s happening right now. Sometimes you just have to walk in your “I don’t know.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“The piercing angst of disappointment in everything on this side of eternity creates a discontent with this world and pushes us to long for God Himself—and for the place where we will finally walk in the garden with Him again.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“We cannot control our outcomes. We cannot formulate how the promises of God will actually take shape. And we will never be able to demand any of the healing from all the hurt to hurry up.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Sometimes hardship happens not because of what you’ve done but because of something God is doing.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Isaiah 43:18–19 reminds us, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“I like that word compassion. It’s being aware that all of us fear the imperfections deeply carved into our naked selves. We all cover up. And then we all get stripped bare when the wins become losses. Who do you want standing near you in those moments dripping with disappointment and saturated with sorrow? I can assure you it isn’t people who don’t know the whole story, draped in gold-plated pride with mouths eager to spill out commentary like, “Here’s what you did wrong. I would never have allowed myself to get in this position. If only you would have . . .” Nope. It’s those clothed with garments of understanding. They have personally experienced that this life between two gardens can sometimes make it excruciatingly painful to simply be human. They keep in mind the Bible’s instructions, as we rub shoulders human to human. “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Colossians 3:12).”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“God will take every cry you’ve uttered and arrange those sounds into a glorious song. He will add it to His symphony of compassion. You will have a starring solo in which those notes birthed from tears will help ease the ache of another. Those around you will see you standing on a solid rock and hear the glorious echoes of good things bellowing from your belly. The enemy will shake and quake and shrink back afraid. He’s terrified of that girl. He’s terrified of you. You are anchored to the hope of God that so few ever truly find. You, dear longsuffering soul, are a Job of your time. One who will be misjudged and misunderstood. The enemy will try to trip you and rip you to shreds with the hurtful hisses that all this longsuffering is for nothing. Don’t you dare listen.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“no matter how well I plan things, I can’t control them. No matter how well I think I know the people in my life, I can’t control them. No matter how well I follow the rules, do what’s right, and seek to obey God with my whole heart, I can’t control my life. I can’t control God.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“But disappointment isn’t proof that God is withholding good things from us. Sometimes it’s His way of leading us Home.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Father,”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Put some paint on the emptiness. Color-correct your perspective. Forget the cravings for comfort zones. Trade your comfort for compassion. Don’t welcome hardness of heart as easiness of life. Get wet with paint. Put the brush to the canvas. Own it. Declare yourself a painter. And when someone steals all the lines from your coloring book, determine to color the world anyhow with the same generosity of compassion that God offers every day. Be like Him. The Creator, the Master Artist. Don’t be like them. The hard-hearted haters. The ones who refuse to admit that their coloring books are missing lines too. The ones who refuse to break secrets with their fellow humans. The ones who would rather criticize than comfort. The ones who are loud with their opinions but who have never suffered with a blank canvas.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“This isn’t an indication that your healing isn’t working. It’s just an indication that you’re a human still holding on to some hurt that needs to be resolved.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“The enemy uses disappointments to cause so much trouble in an unsettled heart. A heart hungry for something to ease the ache of disappointment is especially susceptible to the most dangerous forms of desire.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Usually, the most disappointing realities come from the most realistic expectations. An unmet longing from a realistic expectation is such a searing pain within a human heart.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“I’m no longer at the first cliff where the ground fell out from beneath me. But I’m also not all the way across to solid ground where everyone exhales, exhausted but relieved. No, I’m in the middle, which honestly might be the scariest of all places. Moving ahead and turning back are both equally terrifying.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Anytime we feel not good enough we deny the powerful truth that we are a glorious work of God in progress. We are imperfect because we are unfinished.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“I have allowed myself to believe that to be stripped of all the props and pretensions and accolades and approvals is to be stripped of the best parts of me. When in reality what’s best about me comes to the forefront when I’m closest to the way God created me, naked and unashamed. To stand naked and unashamed is the way of the garden life.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“What gives power to all that I fear others are thinking and accusing and saying isn’t the people themselves. It isn’t even the enemy. I’m the one who decides if their statements have power over me or not. It’s me.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“REMEMBER: •​Sometimes to get your life back, you have to face the death of what you thought your life would look like. •​Disappointment is that feeling things should be better than they are. •​Disappointment isn’t proof that God is withholding good things from us. Sometimes it’s His way of leading us Home. •​If the enemy can isolate us, he can influence us. •​We will never appreciate or even desire the hope of our True Love if lesser loves don’t disappoint.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“The disappointment that is exhausting and frustrating you? It holds the potential for so much good. But we’ll only see it as good if we trust the heart of the Giver.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“God is the author of the Truth that empowers us. Satan is the author of the deception that imprisons us. And once he’s isolated us and imprisoned us, his plan is to destroy us. There is no freedom in sin. There is a quickly fading thrill with sparks and fireworks, but then darkness envelopes, and you realize the party is in a prison cell. Anything that doesn’t line up with Truth is a lie. And where there is a lie, the enemy is at work. The longer he can keep someone deceived, the more their flesh will scream for pleasure, and soon they will become slaves to the most depraved versions of their desires. These people are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for “people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” (2 Peter 2:17–19)”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“My feelings and my faith will almost certainly come into conflict with each other. My feelings see rotten situations as absolutely unnecessary hurt that stinks. My soul sees it as fertilizer for a better future. Both these perspectives are real. And they yank me in different directions with never-ending wrestling. To wrestle well means acknowledging my feelings but moving forward, letting my faith lead the way.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Trust. Trading our will for “Thy will,” because we know He will.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“doesn’t it all come down to that? Trust. Trading our will for “Thy will,” because we know He will.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“sometimes when you can’t find your footing with your own faith, you just have to go stand on someone else’s for a while.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“God loves us too much to answer our prayers in any other way than the right way. And He loves us too much to answer our prayers at any other time than the right time.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered