The Inner Voice of Love Quotes

“When suddenly you seem to lose all you thought you had gained, do not despair. You must expect setbacks and regressions. Don't say to yourself "All is lost. I have to start all over again." This is not true. What you have gained you have gained....When you return to the the road, you return to the place where you left it, not to where you started.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“When people show you their boundaries ("I can't do this for you") you feel rejected...part of your struggle is to set boundaries to your own love. Only when you are able to set your own boundaries will you be able to acknowledge, respect and even be grateful for the boundaries of others.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“There are two extremes to avoid: being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so many things that you stay far away from the wound you want to heal.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“The main question is “Do you own your pain?” As long as you do not own your pain—that is, integrate your pain into your way of being in the world—the danger exists that you will use the other to seek healing for yourself. When you speak to others about your pain without fully owning it, you expect something from them that they cannot give. As a result, you will feel frustrated, and those you wanted to help will feel confused, disappointed, or even further burdened.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“You keep listening to those who seem to reject you. But they never speak about you. They speak about their own limitations. They confess their poverty in the face of your needs and desires. They simply ask for your compassion. They do not say that you are bad, ugly, or despicable. They say only that you are asking for something they cannot give and that they need to get some distance from you to survive emotionally. The sadness is that you perceive their necessary withdrawal as a rejection of you instead of as a call to return home and discover there your true belovedness.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Often love is offered to you, but you do not recognize it. You discard it because you are fixed on receiving it from the same person to whom you gave it.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Exhaustion, burnout, and depression are not signs that you are doing God’s will. God is gentle and loving. God desires to give you a deep sense of safety in God’s love. Once you have allowed yourself to experience that love fully, you will be better able to discern who you are being sent to in God’s name.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“There is within you a lamb and a lion. Spiritual maturity is the ability to let lamb and lion lie down together.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Because where God wants you to be, God holds you safe and gives you peace, even when there is pain.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“You have an idea what the new country looks like. Still, you are very much at home, although not truly at peace, in the old country. You know the ways of the old country, it’s joys and pains, its happy and sad moments. You have spent most of your days there. Even though you know that you have not found there what your heart most desires, you remain quite attached to it. It has become part of your very bones.

Now you have come to realize that you must leave it and enter the new country, where your Beloved dwells. You know that what helped and guided you in the old country no longer works, but what else do you have to go by? You are being asked to trust that you will find what you need in the new country. That requires the death of what has become precious to you: influence, success, yes, even affection and praise.

Trust is so hard, since you have nothing to fall back on. Still, trust is what is essential. The new country is where you are called to go, and the only way to go there is naked and vulnerable.

It seems that you keep crossing and recrossing the border. For a while you experience a real joy in the new country. But then you feel afraid and start longing again for all you left behind, so you go back to the old country. To your dismay, you discover that the old country has lost its charm. Risk a few more steps into the new country, trusting that each time you enter it, you will feel more comfortable and be able to stay longer.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Every time you do something that comes from your needs for acceptance, affirmation, or affection, and every time you do something that makes these needs grow, you know that you are not with God. These needs will never be satisfied; they will only increase when you yield to them.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“You can only seek God when you have already found God. The desire for God’s unconditional love is the fruit of having been touched by that love.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Not being welcome is your greatest fear. It connects with your birth fear, your fear of not being welcome in this life, and your death fear, your fear of not being welcome in the life after this. It is the deep-seated fear that it would have been better if you had not lived.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“I have also learned to catch the darkness early, not to allow sadness to grow into depression or let a sense of being rejected develop into a feeling of abandonment. Even in the renewed and deepened friendship, I feel the freedom to point to the little clouds and ask for help in letting them pass by.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Every time you close another door—be it the door of immediate satisfaction, the door of distracting entertainment, the door of busyness, the door of guilt and worry, or the door of self-rejection—you commit yourself to go deeper into your heart and thus deeper into the heart of God.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Remember, you are held safe. You are loved. You are protected. You are in communion with God and with those whom God has sent you. What is of God will last. It belongs to the eternal life. Choose it, and it will be yours.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Every time you reject yourself, you idealize others.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Those you have deeply loved become part of you. The longer you live, there will always be more people to be loved by you and to become part of your inner community. The wider your inner community becomes, the more easily you will recognize your own brothers and sisters in the strangers around you.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Your true identity is as a child of God. This is the identity you have to accept. Once you have claimed it and settled in it, you can live in a world that gives you much joy as well as pain. You can receive the praise as well as the blame that comes to you as an opportunity for strengthening your basic identity, because the identity that makes you free is anchored beyond all human praise and blame. You belong to God, and it is as a child of God that you are sent into the world.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Percayalah bahwa pada suatu saat cinta akan menaklukkan dirimu sehingga bagian dirimu yang paling menakutkan sekalipun akan membiarkan cinta mengusir semua ketakutanmu”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“You have to acknowledge where you are and affirm that place. You have to be willing to live your loneliness, your incompleteness, your lack of total incarnation fearlessly, and trust that God will give you the people to keep showing you the truth of who you are.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Do not tell everyone your story. You will only end up feeling more rejected. People cannot give you what you long for in your heart. The more you expect from people’s response to your experience of abandonment, the more you will feel exposed to ridicule. You have to close yourself to the outside world so you can enter your own heart and the heart of God through your pain. God will send to you the people with whom you can share your anguish, who can lead you closer to the true source of love.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Still, as long as you keep pointing to the specifics, you will miss the full meaning of your pain. You will deceive yourself into believing that if the people, circumstances, and events had been different, your pain would not exist. This might be partly true, but”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“You will hear voices saying, “You are worthless, you have nothing to offer, you are unattractive, undesirable, unlovable.” The more you sense God’s call, the more you will discover in your own soul the cosmic battle between God and Satan. Do not be afraid. Keep deepening your conviction that God’s love for you is enough, that you are in safe hands, and that you are being guided every step of the way. Don’t be surprised by the demonic attacks. They will increase, but as you face them without fear, you will discover that they are powerless.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Isn’t it important for your friends close by and far away to know the high cost of these insights? Wouldn’t they find it a source of consolation to see that light and darkness, hope and despair, love and fear are never very far from each other, and that spiritual freedom often requires a fierce spiritual battle?”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“You feel overwhelmed by distractions, fantasies, the disturbing desire to throw yourself into the world of pleasure. But you know already that you will not find there an answer to your deepest question. Nor does the answer lie in rehashing old events, or in guilt or shame. All of that makes you dissipate yourself and leave the rock on which your house is built. You have to trust the place that is solid, the place where you can say yes to God’s love even when you do not feel it. Right now you feel nothing except emptiness and the lack of strength to choose. But keep saying, “God loves me, and God’s love is enough.” You have to choose the solid place over and over again and return to it after every failure.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“You find it hard not to mention your own pains and sorrows to those you are trying to help. You feel that what belongs to the core of your humanity should not be hidden. You want to be a fellow traveler, not a distant guide. The main question is “Do you own your pain?” As long as you do not own your pain—that is, integrate your pain into your way of being in the world—the danger exists that you will use the other to seek healing for yourself. When you speak to others about your pain without fully owning it, you expect something from them that they cannot give.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“Your way of being present to your community may require times of absence, prayer, writing, or solitude. These too are times for your community.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“You feel overwhelmed by distractions, fantasies, the disturbing desire to throw yourself into the world of pleasure. But you know already that you will not find there an answer to your deepest question. Nor does the answer lie in rehashing old events, or in guilt or shame. All of that makes you dissipate yourself and leave the rock on which your house is built.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

“The situation which brought about your pain was simply the form in which you came in touch with the human condition of suffering.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom