The Minister's Wife Quotes

“The world we live in approves of all our longing and our envy. It cups its hands around the little flame of our envy and blows it into full life, if we let it. Gratitude, though, smothers envy and discontent, like a thick blanket thrown over that small fire.”
― Karen Stiller, The Minister's Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Friendship, Loneliness, Forgiveness, and More

“All this pain and healing and all these moves have turned us into wanderers. There is so much wandering throughout the Bible: movement, shifting, and following. Trusting, leaving, and arriving. We follow God and love follows us.”
― Karen Stiller, The Minister's Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Friendship, Loneliness, Forgiveness, and More

“Church, with all its imperfections, is faith’s incubator. Church is faith’s hospital and its picnic grounds, its sheltering tree and also the rich soil from which it grows. Church embraces faith and holds it tenderly with strong arms. It embraces me. And so I love the church, even when it expects more of me than I think it should.”
― Karen Stiller, The Minister's Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Friendship, Loneliness, Forgiveness, and More

“I am just following you around,” Stiller said out loud to her husband one day. I imagine it’s hard not to feel that way. “I sometimes had this feeling of following and never leading, of lagging behind and not standing beside.”
― Karen Stiller, The Minister's Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Friendship, Loneliness, Forgiveness, and More