"...All of growth, healing and progress begins with Stopping......You stop hitting the snooze button. You wake up--this is it! Not a dress rehearsal, not practice for when you get it all together, because you never will. Name one person who ever has...So you start...You ask yourself how alive you're willing to be. Are you ok with current levels, of presence, immediacy, laughter? Or do you long for a wilder, truer life, a goofier-duckier life?

Maybe go outside...Maybe look up at the wild canopy or stars overhead, those goofy birds? If bird song were the ONLY proof there was a God--an intelligent love energy of some sort--it would be enough for me. Thrush, chickadees, loons? I'm in. Maybe go to church, temple, mosque, dance class, a room of recovery, a concert--where you can hook into something much bigger and lovelier than your own mind? That's heaven for me....

So stop, go, wake up, spritz yourself with a plant mister of living water. Cry more--cleanse your soul, hydrate, baptize, grow the seeds at your feet. Laugh more: It's the life-iest thing we do.....You are loved and chosen; as is--annoying, motley you! Me! We heal in community; so find one. We want you. As Frederick Buechner wrote, "The grace of god means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't be complete without you. 

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." 

-Anne Lamott