Cara Wall > Quotes

“Because only in the quality of your struggle with one another will you learn anything about yourself.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“What a privilege, Nan thought, to believe oneself completely independent, to feel unshackled by social conventions and the worry of what other people might think. What a blessing, to be lonely in that particular way.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“Nan had known, as a child, that God did not answer prayers for more candy or new shoes. Those were worldly things, not sacred. God answered prayers about being a better friend, or being able to get a good grade on a test. God gave wisdom and the ability to work hard. God did not change the circumstances of your life, God changed you. ”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“There are three kinds of trials in life,” he said, relishing the simplicity of the idea. He heard his voice grow stronger, stood straight to accommodate it. “There are the trials God gives you,” he continued, “which almost always lead to wisdom, and so are worth the trouble. There are the trials you force upon yourself, which should be abandoned at their onset.” He nodded to show them that he realized he was speaking about himself. “And there are the trials we create for one another,” he continued, “which are more complicated because it is impossible to know whose hand is guiding them. “The only advice I can give anyone is this,” he said. “Don’t ever shrink from those last trials. Run to them. Because only in the quality of your struggle with one another will you learn anything about yourself. Sometimes that struggle is nearly impossible to survive, but it is those trials which make a life.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“Lord, help us. Make us useful even when we do not know what to do. Make us perceptive when we are dull, make us compassionate even as we try to turn away. Make us intelligent. Our ideas are so small. Yours are limitless. Please help us learn the things we need to know.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“Those feelings that hound you, Nan—they are God. They are God telling you to do something, to be different in some way. Sometimes it isn’t right to pray for acceptance of the status quo. If God calls you to upend it, then you should upend it.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“Love is the enjoyment of something. The feeling of wanting something deeply, of wanting nothing more. Our love of God is not as important as our faith in God. Love wanes. Faith cannot. One can have faith and anger, faith and hate. One can believe deeply and still rail against God, still blame God. In fact, if one can hate God it is a sign of deep faith, because you cannot hate and at the same time doubt God’s existence.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“Everything she needed had simply appeared.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“Nan had always known, even as a child, that God did not answer prayers for worldly things like candy or new shoes. God answered prayers that helped her help others. God did not change the circumstances of your life; God changed you. She had seen it happen too many times to doubt it. She had seen so many people walk nervously down the aisle of her father’s church to accept God at the altar, then had seen them find friends, drink less, hug their children more. She had seen the transformative power of the church, and she knew there was a God, even if no one could be sure in what form God”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“Don’t we just have to find the thing that lets us not be scared to die? The thing that lets us not be scared, so we can live?”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“On the day Charles Barrett died, James MacNally closed the door to his study, sat down in his chair, and laid his head on the thick edge of his desk so he could weep. His wife, Nan, did not knock to be let in, though his rough, heavy sobs hit her like stones. She knew James’s own death would wring the same sounds from her, if he went first and left her adrift in the world, unmoored. Nan knew, full well, that life was a series of bereavements and each stole from her one load-bearing beam, one bone. Nan almost always believed, as her father had, that even deep wounds could be repaired, that God healed all parts of us like skin: no matter how sharp the cut, it would someday knit itself back together and leave only a scar.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“Lord, help us. Make us useful even when we do not know what to do. Make us perceptive when we are dull, make us compassionate even as we try to turn away. Make us intelligent. Our ideas are so small. Yours are limitless. Please help us learn the”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“But in London he saw a new response to tragedy: It was not skinned or stuffed; no one kept it in a box, preserving it like an injured bird. People unfastened it, let it fall into the gutter, and walked away, determined not to look back. Instead of adorning themselveswith it, letting it define them, people let the wounds heal over and, touching their scars like talismans, set out to rebuild their world. - James was determined to join them.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“He had once tried to inspire people to believe. Now he knew that people believed or did not believe. It was not he who did the convincing.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“I just need you to believe in me.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“You know, it’s almost impossible to fire a minister,” she said. “That’s why so many churches are so awful.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“Nan's faith is nurturing," he said. "It's kind and comforting, accepting and giving. My own is challenging. My urge is to confront, to push, to shake people until they wake up. If I could be that way wholeheartedly, it would be easier. [...]”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“God did not change the circumstances of your life; God changed you. She had seen it happen too many times to doubt it. She had seen so many people walk nervously down the aisle of her father’s church to accept God at the altar, then had seen them find friends, drink less, hug their children more. She had seen the transformative power of the church, and she knew there was a God, even”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“help us. Make us useful even when we do not know what to do. Make us perceptive when we are dull, make us compassionate even as we try to turn away. Make us intelligent. Our ideas are so small. Yours are limitless. Please help us learn the things we need to know.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“I didn’t marry a minister. I married the man.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“She would never be free again. But she would also never be alone.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“Charles's greatest attribute was his ability to remind others of the direct presence of God. It was the greatest solace he had to give, yet it could not help her.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“Manners exist so that everyone feels comfortable.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“A faith, Charles, is one's own," he said, letting his gaze fall from the ceiling. "No married couple has the same faith. And one faith is not better than the other.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“It seemed a miracle. It seemed he had asked God for more than comfort and God had given it. It seemed he had asked God to cure his son, and God was trying. It seemed that, despite Charles’s abandonment, God was present in his life, and Charles was unbearably ashamed.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“God did not change the circumstances of your life; God changed you.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“You’re so matter-of-fact,” she said, “so unembarrassed.” “I’ve never understood embarrassment,” Annelise said. “Why are we bothered by what is difficult? Why are we unsettled by what is strange? I’ve always just been curious. I always just want to find out as much as I can.” “But”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“He loved every person in this church more than he would have ever thought possible, loved them not with the automatic love of childhood or the easy love of coincidence, but with the tautly stitched love of people who have faced uncertainty together, who have stuck it out, the strong love of people who looked to their side while suffering and saw the other there.”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved

“His faith was rooted in the idea that God worked through man. God did not act upon people; God inspired them, existing only as an animating force. Therefore, medicine was a miracle. But what, then, was the failure of medicine? He thought of Charles, whose soul was crying out for progress, who wanted to lock doctors in their offices and make them study harder, faster, who wanted people to give money, to call congressmen. Charles, who had given up on ideas and wanted, now, for action to lead to success. When it didn’t, whom would Charles blame?”
― Cara Wall, The Dearly Beloved