Life on earth has sharp teeth. It has a way of wounding us. The only way to begin nursing your wounds is to name your wounds. There are few guarantees in life, but you can count on this: if you ignore your wounds, they will not go away. They will get worse and grow infected.

...if you live for people's acceptance, you'll die from their rejection.

... the Scripture is like one big, unbroken story about people who decided to follow God and ended up failing almost as much as they succeeded. After God told Abraham that he was going to have millions of kids, the old man literally laughed in God's face. Jacob was a lying cheat before he met God at Bethel. And he was a lying cheat afterward too. These are two of Israel's greatest patriarchs. Moses was a murderer, a doubter, an excuse-maker. he was chosen to lead God's people out of slavery. David was "a man after God's own heart." But he was also an adulterer. His son, Solomon, was the wisest man who ever lived. But he had hundreds of wives. And Jesus' disciples were all flawed in their own way - from Thomas, the doubter, to Peter, the hothead. With such a long list of people who both followed God and stumbled constantly, why would we assume our experiences would be any different?

Ah me! we wound where we never intended to strike; we create anger where we never meant harm; and these thoughts are the thorns in our cushion. - William Makepeace Thackeray,

Safe in a ditch he bides, With twenty trenched gashes on his head, The least a death to nature.

I tell you that which you yourselves do know, Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor poor dumb mouths, And bid them speak for me.