With love and prayers by F. Jarvis. Quotes XI

-Much unhappiness in life seems to me to stem from the unwillingness of people to live with their decisions.
-If we really have made a wrong decision and are realistic about the opportunities a change might bring us, then we should correct our decision.
-Much of life's unhappiness is caused by our unwillingness to face up to the inevitable discouragements entailed in any one  of the lives we might choose.
-When we face the fact that every life worth living has its discouragements, its own unfairness if you like, we have then taken a giant step towards happiness.
-In any life worth living, we will be hurting much of the time.
-As we mature, we acquire the faith, the perspective, that the discouragements, the injuries, cannot break us, cannot make us lose sight of the great things we are determined to achieve.
-Faith grows stronger and stronger every time we overcome discouragement and pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and go on.
-Each discouragement is a test, each discouragement overcome is a victory.
-"Blessed is the man who falls into divers kinds of trials, knowing that the testing of this faith will produce the spirit of endurance and endurance will enlarge and confirm this faith.
-We feel downhearted or empty, when we lose our sense of the meaning and purpose of our lives.
-"From time to time, almost every thoughtful and reflective person walks through life's valleys. Such experiences of depression and despair are natural to people who labor strenuously to achieve something important. The issue is not so much that you are depressed as what you are going to do about being depressed."J.S. Bezzant. Father Jarvis tutor at Cambridge University.
-Three tactics in dealing with depression:
1. Don't run.
2. Take one step at a time.
3. Find and keep the vision.
-Be honest with yourself. Don't run away. Don't pretend, don't wait for it to pass. Don't be passive.
-We have to quiet down and listen if we are to find the center of our lives.
-If the search for what is good and true and beautiful begins with emptiness, it continues to be a hard journey, a long and arduous search, through encounters not only with the Herods of this world, but even worse, with our own inward sense of despair, that terrible sense that the whole journey is not worth it.
-If we are somehow able to leave behind what is known and comfortable, and undertake the journey in search of life's meaning, we must realize that the journey will be arduous, filled with discouragement and despair, filled with the voices singing in our ears, saying that the search is folly. We must somehow sustain hope, as the wise men did, when in the depths we lose all sight of the star. And we must expect, like the wise men, that we shall never experience great joy until we have suffered many sorrows.
-They departed to their own country another way.
-Get  every penny of this and take it to Mrs. Harriger. Tell her you are sorry. Tell her you will work for her every day in the garden for the remainder of the summer.
-I knew there would be no supper.
-At about 8:30 my father came up as always to hear my prayers. He sat as always at the foot of the bed. As always I rendered my prayers to God and my father. At the end there was a short silence, which I pathetic and pitiable, broke by saying: I am sorry, Daddy. I know he said and ran his fingers through my hair. And then he arose and returned down the stairs.
The power that two little words can have: I know, he said. What more any of us want if life than to be understood? Those two small words conveyed to me that he somehow understood how I could do something so terrible. That he understood that I was sorry. I was no longer alone. And the power of a tiny gesture, his fingers through my hair. Despite my crime, I was not only understood, I was loved.
Two small words and one small gesture and the whole universe was again set right. I lay back upon my pillow and slept the profound sleep of one who is at peace.
-People who don't care about you don't take the trouble to rebuke you. Most people avoid such confrontations. They simply don't give you the raise or the promotion, and you never find out why.
-I worked for Old Lady Harriger every day for the rest of the summer. The punishment was not reduced. The hours were not shortened. Not a penny of my money was returned. I was not let off easy. And for that I am glad because I felt by summer's end that I had paid for my sins. And that's a great feeling.
-Now that he is gone and I can't thank him, I thank God that my father loved me so much that he did not spare me the pain, the loneliness, the desolation, by which alone I could grow to become a better and stronger person.