Quotes and Invitations to See With More Depth

Today’s quote collection addresses struggle. If you’re muddling through a difficult chapter, hold on. Are you being invited to see more deeply? Maybe glory awaits on the other side of what feels like dismantling. Does hope elude you? I’m right there with you.

Quotes and Invitations to See More Deeply

If you’re new, it may seem strange when I shapeshift from sharing interiors to personal reflections. Obviously I live a lot of life beyond interior design, and my educational background includes professional counseling, wisdom work, and spiritual formation.

While the intersection of timeless homes and spiritual timelessness charms me, heartulness and spiritual journeying take up more space in my consciousness. Should I be mixing passions here? I suppose i’m also lazy about maintaining multiple blogs (and not inclined to become everyone’s cup of tea!).

Yesterday a friend and I lingered over a long lunch. We have known each other for 55 years, and we marvelled at where God/universe/Love/Mystery brought us in recent months.

So many trials and opportunities for spiritual growth! If, like us, you long to live more consciously and stay awake to become a conduit of love and grace, maybe words shared here will touch your soul.

There are so many moments on this journey I have been tempted to keep my heart safe. If you’re counting the cost and relying on reason alone, self-protection is easily justified.

But what about that still, small voice calling us to higher heights?

Is it trustworthy?

I snapped most of these photos of tropical beauty and orchids in a conservatory near our home when my health fell apart in 2018.

My inner landscape had become a desert, and participating in transformation, building faith, and relying on prayer were loving choices I made to grow more empowered.

Suffering has a way of limiting our options and putting us on the fast track for true healing!

In 2025, a new health crisis shook me to the core (what is it about these lessons coming every seven years like the shedding of skin our bodies do?).

Maybe you recall reading my personal reflections last spring and summer about filling with rage, dwelling in uncertainty, and humbly surrendering as my personal resources dwindled.

I feel grateful for every pain and lesson learned in the past year despite the fact they nearly killed me.

I’m someone new now. The old fears are gone. I sent old wounds packing.

New tools and fresh reserves of courage and strength are mine.

Chronic illness remains, but its shape, proportion, and relationship to the whole of my life and identity transformed.

This is what healing looks like as an ever-evolving process as I awaken and ascend in the absence of cure.

It’s messy and humiliating at times. Late night fevers, cold sweats, foot spasms, pancreatitis, mysterious skin afflictions, and brain fog at the most inconvenient junctures are very real.

But just as real? A deepening compassion, a growing capacity to hold grief, a willingness to allow reality to be reality, and a soul attuned to the everlasting so that timelessness becomes miraculously accessible.

I honestly don’t have language for most of these mystical moments in daily life so please forgive such imperfect expressions. The moments are holy and too trans-rational for my little operating system and limited vocabulary.

I can tell you that a lot of death seems necessary. And also that a bunch of dismantling continues.

Even dramatic dismantling since I am at the cusp of noticing how much of my pride I mistook for humility. Cuckoo!

Oh the layers of pride lurking in the shadows and blocking blessings.

So I seek the grace to explore pride and become aware of how utterly unspecial I am. To realize we’re all the same has been the best news for my body, mind, and spirit.

I am not self-deprecating here or hoping to hear oh, but you’re a child of God and so special.

While each spiritual journey is different (and the pattern of archetypes animating us certainly varies), we really are the same.

Thank goodness we were created for relationship. Thank God that as above, so below.

James Finley writes:

“If we are absolutely grounded in the absolute love of God that protects us from nothing even as it sustains us in all things…

then we can face all things with courage and tenderness and touch the hurting places in others and in ourselves with love.”

There’s a world of wisdom in that single sentence!

The reason it has been so important to acknowledge that I am not special is because the point of my healing work is not to devote my days to a self-perfection project and then die all polished up and holy.

It’s to deepen in wisdom, love, and humility so I may also touch the hurting places in others.

We’re here as energetic instruments of healing, transformation, and empowerment.

It turns out life is about creating Life, and we knew this when we were children.

We can know it again if we are willing to soften and open…

if we are willing to participate and flow with the source ever flowing.

I wonder how the invitation to open will arrive for you?

I wonder what disguise God may assume in your life to lead you toward your highest good?

I wonder if I will re-read my words here a year from now and marvel: if I had only known the rich blessings and tender heartaches in store for my highest good!

Isn’t it wondrous divine design that we cannot know the future yet we have the power right where we are to plant seeds of healing and goodness for the chapters ahead?

For me, nature is all the evidence I need to know this fruitful work matters.

These seeds we plant are about hope, and our belief they will grow is faith.

So I ask for your prayers. Please pray that my faith might strengthen and grow. Pray that a lightness would come to my spirit to discern when it’s time to let go or bloom.

After all, the unforever is at the heart of everything.

If we allow reality to be reality we will see how impermanence too dwells in the heart of the Gospel story. When blooming fades, there is more life after life as the pattern begins anew.

Peace to you right where you are.

-michele

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