Lisa Wingate Quotes & Sayings

But the love of sisters needs no words. It does not depend on memories, or mementos, or proof. It runs as deep as a heartbeat. It is as ever present as a pulse. — Lisa Wingate

Your children are the greatest gift God will give to you, and their souls the heaviest responsibility He will place in your hands. Take time with them, teach them to have faith in God. Be a person in whom they can have faith. When you are old, nothing else you've done will have mattered as much. — Lisa Wingate

The man who buys what he does not need will often need what he cannot buy.' — Lisa Wingate

What the mind don't 'member, the heart still know. Love, the strongest thang of all. Stronger than all the rest. — Lisa Wingate

The most important skill in life is to learn the acceptance of that which you have not planned for yourself. — Lisa Wingate

Remember that, in any encounter, the only thing you can control is your own actions and reactions. You cannot dictate the actions of the other person, or in this case, the horse, but you can often send the right signals to get what you want. If you are often baffled by the reactions others have to you, it is probably because you are unaware of the silent signals you send through your posture, your facial gestures, your tone of voice, the amount of personal space you maintain, and so forth. Ever wondered why people don't listen when you try to assert yourself, or why people back away when you're trying to be friendly, or why you're never the one people seek out in a crowded room? Body language. Silent signals. Mixed signals. The trick is to focus outward, not inward. — Lisa Wingate

The truth was, I yearned, in a soul-deep way, to be Sarra. To 'feel' that God was so very close, so very concerned with my particular life, so very ready to protect and to love. Always nearby. Always listening. Always leading. — Lisa Wingate

The secret to a happy life is not in getting what you want. It is in learning to want what you get. — Lisa Wingate

Sometimes we must try to view the actions of those around us with forgiveness. We must realize that they are going on the only road they can see. Sometimes we cannot raise our chins and see eye to eye, so we must bow our heads and have faith in one another. — Lisa Wingate

Everything you want waits on the other side of fear. — Lisa Wingate

Maybe grace was all around me, bubbling through, passing under my feet, and I'd never seen it because I'd never tried to see. — Lisa Wingate

Sometimes a world that doesn't exist is the only escape from the one that does. — Lisa Wingate

A life can be blessed without your ever deserving it. You can be loved by people just because they choose to love you. — Lisa Wingate

My life was like that box. The best things in all the imperfections. — Lisa Wingate

The future is a blank page, but not a mystery. — Lisa Wingate

There was no other place I loved so well as this one."
"Me as well,"... For all the places I've loved, there have been none like this. This place is a deeper love, a sisterhood of water and sand and soul. A place where you fill me through my eyes and my ears, Father. — Lisa Wingate

The little box that was given to me was by no means unique. I'd heard of prayer boxes, and I knew what they were for.
... Any scrap of paper will do, anywhere, anytime of the day or night. The important part, in a world of fractured thoughts, hurried moments, and scattershot prayers, is to take the time to think through, to write down, to clarify in your own mind the things you're asking for, the things you're grateful for, the things your're troubled about, the hopes you've been nurturing.
And then?
Put them in the box and ...
Let. Them. Go.
That's what trust is. It's letting go of the worry. It's the way of peace and also the way of God. such a hard road to travel for people like me, who are worriers. When I'm writing a story, I control the whole universe. In life ... not so much. Actually, not at all. Things happen that I hadn't anticipated and wouldn't choose and can't change. That's the tough part. — Lisa Wingate

Sometimes life goes by in a trickle and sometimes life goes by in a flood. It's in those rainy seasons you find out how well you can swim. — Lisa Wingate

Sooner or later, the future always circles back to the past. — Lisa Wingate

Help them to show the world that our greatness is not in things we do for ourselves, but in things we do for others. — Lisa Wingate

My mama used to say the blues is an ailment that don't like no sunshine in the room. — Lisa Wingate

She lays her tired head on my shoulder and looks through the shell with me, into the great mystery. I think again that heaven must be like this place, and I say that to Isabelle. I wonder, When she is in heaven and I am not, how far away will she be? "It's just another journey," she whispers. . . I thought of my mother, of how desperately I wanted her to be here a little longer, a lot longer, forever. Sometimes it seemed that I should be able to change things, to alter the course of events, just by wanting it badly enough. But I couldn't. Iola's observations said as much. We, in our humanness, cannot help but foolishly desire eternity in this life. — Lisa Wingate

Decision you make in life has benefits and consequences. Sometimes you just have to go on faith, and even that comes at a price. It means you have to give up the idea that you're the one in charge of the universe. — Lisa Wingate

I understood now that all of us have that place inside that wants to be part of something, that needs the comfort and companionship of loved ones. Within each of us, there is an empty room, and when we open the door, light flows in. The wider we open it, and the longer we leave it open, the brighter our souls become. — Lisa Wingate

Some things just are, because they are. Because God made them that way. — Lisa Wingate

George Vida braced his hands on the table before taking his seat, his gaze strafing the room with the discernment of a leathery old goat sniffing for something to nibble on. — Lisa Wingate

Life is a process of storms and rebuilding, of fires and regrowth, of loss and gain. — Lisa Wingate

God is a good horseman. He waits while we circle the fences of our lives - whatever they are, whether it be a bad childhood, or a destructive habit, family problems, an addiction, a personal tragedy, an inability to forgive someone else or to allow ourselves to ask forgiveness, or believe we deserve it. The Good Horseman waits, and each time we turn and look at Him, He stretches out His hand, slow and quiet, until finally, sooner or later, we reach for it, and we come to the center with Him, and find that peace was waiting there all along. — Lisa Wingate

Prayers are answered in ways we don't choose. The river of grace bubbles up in unexpected places. — Lisa Wingate

Well, that's one of the paradoxes of life. You can't have it all. You can have some of this and some of that or all of this and none of that. We make the trade-offs we think are best at the time. — Lisa Wingate

My mama used to say if you frown on the outside long enough, eventually you'll grow a frown on the inside, too. — Lisa Wingate

Somewhere, deep within me, beyond the passion, beyond the beauty of the night, that little spark of Daily magic ignited in me again, began burning in a place that had gone dark and untended, that had yearned to be bright and warm. I felt it now, something old, something new, something complete. Perhaps it had been in there in me all along, the belief that there is a plan and a purpose, that God whispers into every life, some things that are beyond the scope of the mind, and can only be felt with the heart and the spirit.
Those dreams, the dreams that are dreamed *for* us, not by us, are the truest of all. — Lisa Wingate

Well, you know how a river moves a mountain." The words surprised me at first, but I knew where they were coming from. "Stone by stone," she finished. — Lisa Wingate

Eventually, you must stop running to something or from something and embrace where you are. Otherwise you'll never embrace anything. — Lisa Wingate

Realize that grieving is a process. It doesn't stop just because the family wants the parent or grandparent to get on with life. — Lisa Wingate

I heard my grandfathers voice. What do they think
the storms will never come? You build a house on the sand, the sand shifts eventually ... Remember that. — Lisa Wingate

Even though Jack wasn't a romantic man in big showy ways, those little things let me know his feelings more than any high-dollar roses on Valentine's Day ever could have. In Corinthians, Paul says love's not boastful, so I reckon Jack got it right. His love was patient and quiet, and it endured. — Lisa Wingate

Fear builds walls instead of bridges. I want a life of bridges, not walls. — Lisa Wingate

We cannot change where God has put us. If we are to bloom at all, we must bloom where we have been planted. — Lisa Wingate

Did the dead still want things? Or was death simply a letting go of all that is held so tightly in life - an understanding of the temporal and shallow nature of the human matters of possession, greed, desire, justice? — Lisa Wingate

Hardship finds its way into every life. It's just much easier to see our own than other people's. Hannah — Lisa Wingate

Sometimes, talking to Amber was like herding cats. — Lisa Wingate

Perhaps this rebirth from one thing to another happens repeatedly in a lifetime. Maybe life is a series of little deaths and rebirths, of passages and rites of passage, of God teaching you to stop clinging to one thing so you can reach for another. — Lisa Wingate

A person must have principles, Epiphany. That's the one thing no one can take from you. The only way you can lose your principles is to give them up. Remember that. — Lisa Wingate

Oh shoot, Imagene, you shouldn't have told them that. Big mouth. "I mean, not that the hotel's not open for business now, because it is. Sure enough. You're both here." I flashed a big toothy grin, but only Carter smiled back. The — Lisa Wingate

That's how the grievin' becomes after a time. You've tossed off the black blanket, but scraps of it fall on you unexpected, your life always a quilt with a dark patch or two. The Good Lord uses those to show off the bright colors, I think. — Lisa Wingate

If we never take a chance on people, we'll never know. — Lisa Wingate

What does a lighthouse do? I ask myself. It never moves. It cannot hike up its rocky skirt and dash into the ocean to rescue the foundering ship. It cannot calm the waters or clear the shoals. It can only cast light into the darkness. It can only point the way. Yet, through one lighthouse, you guide many ships. Show this old lighthouse the way. — Lisa Wingate

The beginning of a journey is always uncertainty, but with uncertainty comes hope. — Lisa Wingate

You are a God of winds and tides. Of journeys and storms and navigation by stars and faith. — Lisa Wingate

Love skimmed over the surface like a sailboat, grabbing me up and carrying me along one minute, the speed dizzying, the view passing by so quickly I couldn't take it in. The next minute, my little love boat was swamped in a storm, overturned, the sail pointing toward the murky depths, everything upside down. I was trying to swim with legs of lead. I'd never thought of love this way - as something that moved with the ebb and flow of currents. Push and pull. Joy and pain. Fear and trust. Falling, and trying to balance, and falling again. — Lisa Wingate

One of the secrets to life, Epiphany, is to find your gifts and focus on those. Leave your liabilities in the dust of the road not taken. The world is an imperfect place. Everyone struggles. Successful people see trials as growth experiences, rather than stumbling blocks. You have everything you need for success. You're a beautiful young woman, and you're strong, and you have a clever mind. If you let anyone convince you otherwise, you steal from yourself. — Lisa Wingate

Even when we are lost, God has not lost us. — Lisa Wingate

I decipher the brewing machine because I am, after all, trained to save lives, and this is a life-or-death situation. We need coffee. Now. Or heads will roll. — Lisa Wingate

That's really nice. I picture my mother and my aunt, a little over four years apart in age, curled up in the same bed, sharing innocent games of Let's Pretend. It makes the present situation seem that much sadder. Should geography and real estate signs outweigh the bonds formed by the shared milestones of childhood? — Lisa Wingate

You're going to have to face this. You can't let other people decide your life for you ... Other people's judgement doesn't have any power unless you offer yourself up for trial, so don't. — Lisa Wingate

feel that God was so very close, so very concerned with my particular life, so very ready to protect and to love. Always nearby. Always listening. Always leading. But — Lisa Wingate

The choral group. I have even begun to master the organ, not so different from Monsieur's piano. I strained to hear the whisper, as Sister Agnes went on with her thought. The audiences prefer children who are young, too young to be out working for themselves. It pleases them to feel as though they're donating to — Lisa Wingate

A woman's past need not predict her future. She can dance to new music if she chooses. Her own music. To hear the tune, she must only stop talking. To herself, I mean. We're always trying to persuade ourselves of things." I — Lisa Wingate

I've finally come to fully understand that you can't fix another person. You can't fix the past. You can only change your way of reacting to it. — Lisa Wingate

The most important thing, I think. You can't run from your past. You have to take it for what it is and realize that it's part of you. — Lisa Wingate

After all, what good is a life saved if you fail to live it? — Lisa Wingate

The same road always leads to the same place. If we get on it expecting to go somewhere different, we'll be disappointed, won't we? As you said, it isn't very smart.
... Do the same things, get the same results. Simple, stupid. — Lisa Wingate

You got to remember that when things are out of our hands, that doesn't mean they're not in God's. — Lisa Wingate

She bear-hugged me in a way that performed some sort of chiropractic miracle, because when she set me down, the tightness in my back was gone and I was an inch taller. — Lisa Wingate

The journey itself was the architect of the wood. The interior would never be fully dark because the struggle had cracked it, providing an avenue for the light. — Lisa Wingate

Oh, child. The best thing is to know. I always tell 'em, best to be who you is. What you is deep down inside. Ain't no other good way of livin'. — Lisa Wingate

I don't want someone who's just with me until things get a little too difficult, or something better comes along, or marriage isn't as much fun as it used to be. I want the real thing-for better or worse, rich, poor, sickness, health, forever and ever, amen. — Lisa Wingate

Joy, I realized, isn't so much a circumstance you find yourself in but a choice you make. — Lisa Wingate

No way out but through the storm now. — Lisa Wingate

For just a moment, I thought about it. I pictured how it would be, dusting off the rusty Romance Lindsey, long hidden in some box in the back closet of my mind, under piles of more important boxes filled with Work Lindsey, and Mommy Lindsey, Divorce Court Lindsey, and now Shared Custody Lindsey, and Depressed Insane Lindsey.
Was Romance Lindsey even there anymore? Probably not. She had sat forgotten for so long that, like the Skin Horse and the Velveteen Rabbit, she had ceased to be real. I never even thought about her anymore. Until now. Which was a bad sign that the boxes were getting jumbled up and Control Freak Lindsey needed to get to work.
...
He grinned wickedly, and my stomach fluttered like a firecracker the instant the chain reaction starts inside the casing. Romance Lindsey and Tomboy Lindsey grabbed Mommy Lindsey, shoved her into a box, and sat down on the lid. Control Freak Lindsey ran away screaming. — Lisa Wingate

I never thought to ask her name, Father, but you know the little mulberry girl as you know each sparrow of the field. You are the white berry that removes the stain. — Lisa Wingate

We do not choose the vessel we're given, Iola Anne, but we choose what we pour out and what we keep inside, she say. — Lisa Wingate

We are His children, each knit together as we should be. We must go by the name our Father has given us. Beloved. — Lisa Wingate

Holding a worn Bible, he read from Paul's letter to the Corinthians about the true nature of love - what it is, and what it is not. It is not boastful, not proud, not self-seeking, not easily angered. It does not hold a grudge. It is patient and kind. It protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres, and never fails, even when we turn away from it.
Love believes, and believes, and believes, even when it has been disappointed, and wounded, and thwarted by the weaknesses of the human soul. — Lisa Wingate

People don't come into our lives by accident. — Lisa Wingate

How can God allow such abominations to flourish unchecked in this world?
The answer came in a question, Ruby.
God, in reply, asked, "How can you? — Lisa Wingate

you can't impact something you don't touch. — Lisa Wingate

I wanted to write it on paper and fold it up in a box to remind myself, the next time I couldn't see anything but mountains ahead, that where there's a mountain, there's always a river flowing nearby. Ultimately the river is the more powerful of the two. — Lisa Wingate

Father, help these young people to see. Help them to show the world that our greatness is not in things we do for ourselves, but in things we do for others. In power that channels itself into kindness, in a hand outstretched in love. Be with these determined students. Help them to believe, when the naysayers come, that you make all things possible. "'And, — Lisa Wingate

The shadow of the highest evil intermingled with the light of the highest good. Maybe all lives are filled with this. Maybe it is always a choice between embracing the darkness of one or the saving grace of the other. — Lisa Wingate

All things pass, suga' pea. All the things a this worl' got a time for bornin' and time for dyin', and a time for troublin' and a time for restin'. Ssshhh — Lisa Wingate

INDIAN wisdom says our lives are rivers. We are born somewhere small and quiet and we move toward a place we cannot see, but only imagine. Along our journey, people and events flow into us, and we are created of everywhere and everyone we have passed. Each event, each person, changes us in some way. Even in times of drought we are still moving and growing, but it is during seasons of rain that we expand the most - when water flows from all directions, sweeping at terrifying speed, chasing against rocks, spilling over boundaries. These are painful times, but they enable us to carry burdens we could never have thought possible. — Lisa Wingate

I wrote about the rush of love, the changing of a woman into a mother - a process that happened without conscious thought, as if the heart knew what the mind and body took time to learn. Love is the one thing that matters. That makes everything else matter. That makes everything worthwhile. — Lisa Wingate

Life is not unlike cinema. Each scene has its own music, and the music is created for the scene, woven to it in ways we do not understand. No matter how much we may love the melody of a bygone day or imagine the song of a future one, we must dance within the music of today, or we will always be out of step, stumbling around in something that doesn't suit the moment. — Lisa Wingate

I think of an old sermon my grandfather quoted from time to time - something about not looking back when you're plowing a field, but instead finding a mark in the distance and focusing on that. Otherwise, the rows won't come out straight. — Lisa Wingate

You let a possibility into your mind, you let it into your life. — Lisa Wingate

The trouble with drowning in the mess of your own life is that you're not in any shape to save anyone else. You can't be a lighthouse when you're underwater yourself. — Lisa Wingate

No matter how much you want to cut your family out of your heart, you can't. The bond is born when you are born, like an organ in your body. There is no surgery to remove it. When it is diseased, you live with a dull ache telling you that something inside you is not right. — Lisa Wingate

What we cannot change we must endure without bitterness. — Lisa Wingate

But sometimes it's the things that require a leap of faith that we need to believe in most of all. — Lisa Wingate

But is life a success when it doesn't include time for after-school talks, and curling up to read books on winter nights, and weaving daisy chains in the summer? Is it a success when you have all the big things but none of the small ones? Is it as it should be when everybody grows up and moves to opposite coasts and doesn't care if they ever see each other? — Lisa Wingate

I was not alone in the human condition. — Lisa Wingate

Generally, crises were Mom's domain. Dad's job was to listen, nod, act curmudgeonly, and offer to pay for things. — Lisa Wingate

I never did try to make my daddy understand why I left for the army the way I did. I just thought, because he loved me, he should let it go, and if he couldn't, well then he didn't love me like I thought. Young folks get love and understandin' backward, don't they? Love don't come galloping across fresh pastures like a fine white horse with understandin' riding soft and easy on its back. Understandin' plods in like an old plow mule, breaking sod. It shades the earth with its body, and waters it with sweat. Love grows up in the furrow that's left behind. It takes some patience. I was an impatient young man. ~Claude Fisher — Lisa Wingate

Some of the hardest things you go through will teach you the most. — Lisa Wingate

The storms come and it's water and wind as far as the eye can see for a bit. But winds calm and the waters drain. We find our feet again, and the ground under us sprouts a new crop of seed. That is always the way of it. I don't suppose this storm will be any different. — Lisa Wingate

Be patient, Katie. Everything doesn't have to work itself out today. — Lisa Wingate

Like the beach glass, the wood was more beautiful because of its journey, because of the things it had been through.

Inside the perfect shells is dim,
It's through the cracks, the light comes in. — Lisa Wingate

Sometimes it ain't the drunk or the sinner who needs a shovel across the rear, it's the ones who could quote you chapter and verse about grace, but don't hand it out. — Lisa Wingate