Welcome to our collection of quotes by Shannon L. Alder. We hope you enjoy pondering them and please share widely.
Shame without repentance doesn't lose power when it is spoken, it only seeks approval.
To be a strong and empathetic person always requires us to trust that God will send angels to the people's heart we tried to reach, but couldn't.
Cruelty is a language that the blind can see, the deaf can hear, and the heart feels forever.
Confidence is knowing who you are and not changing it a bit because of someone's version of reality is not your reality.
Staying silent is like a slow growing cancer to the soul and a trait of a true coward. There is nothing intelligent about not standing up for yourself. You may not win every battle. However, everyone will at least know what you stood for you.
Where loved ones failed you, guardian angels stand ready to catch your fall.
Dignity will only happen when you realize that having someone in your life doesn't validate your worth.
The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't being said. The art of reading between the lines is a life long quest of the wise.
True regret is knowing you missed your only opportunity to be simply a good friend to someone that was exactly like you.
Forget what hurt you in the past, but never forget what it taught you.
Longer Version:
Forget what hurt you in the past, but never forget what it taught you. However, if it taught you to hold onto grudges, seek revenge, not forgive or show compassion, to categorize people as good or bad, to distrust and be guarded with your feelings then you didn't learn a thing. God doesn't bring you lessons to close your heart. He brings you lessons to open it, by developing compassion, learning to listen, seeking to understand instead of speculating, practicing empathy and developing conflict resolution through communication. If he brought you perfect people, how would you ever learn to spiritually evolve?
Tough love and brutal truth from strangers are far more valuable than Band-Aids and half-truths from invested friends, who don't want to see you suffer any more than you have.
If your love for another person doesn't include loving yourself then your love is incomplete.
When you spend time worrying, you're simply using your imagination to create things you don't want.
Clarity and focus doesn't always come from God or inspirational quotes. Usually, it takes your mother to slap the reality back into you.
When you stop living your life based on what others think of you, real life begins. At that moment, you will finally see the door of self-acceptance opened.
Your perspective on life comes from the cage you were held captive in.
You can be broken into a dozen shattered pieces and still heal the world because service has its own medicine -- hope.
Never give up on someone with a mental illness. When I is replaced by we, illness becomes wellness.
If you're going to love someone or something then don't be a slow leaking faucet, be a hurricane.
Chasing a person doesn't give you value or build values in you. You earn your value by chasing morality and practicing dignity.
When you judge other people without wanting to know the true story behind their actions, is usually when there is something inside of you that is so broken that if you found out what you believed about them was a lie, you wouldn't want to accept it or mak.
Longer Version:
When you judge other people without wanting to know the true story behind their actions, is usually when there is something inside of you that is so broken that if you found out what you believed about them was a lie, you wouldn't want to accept it or make amends.
The day your soul has died is the day you don't care about anyone's pain unless it builds you up or makes you richer.
You don't have to say everything to be a light. Sometimes a fire built on a hill will bring interested people to your campfire.
Never love someone beneath your level of evolution. If you want a monkey, you can visit one at your local zoo.
You know your testimony is strong when your roots are so deep that other people's storms will never knock you over.
Insecure people only eclipse your sun because they're jealous of your daylight and tired of their dark, starless nights.
Strength of character comes from being hit by stray verbal stones, while protecting discarded ciphers in the snow.
It is not what you leave to your children that matters, but what you leave in them.
Sometimes, we are unable to break free because we are held captive by divine assignment because in our problem God has given us a unique purpose.
The actions of our closest friends say a lot about our character--what we overlook, what we contribute to and what is important to us when the world doesn't take notice.
The biggest battles you face in love are the battle to know your worth and the battle to know when your boundaries need to be protected.
The meaning you apply to what has happened to you is your decision. There will be critics that have their version, but God didn't call them to be your audience, someone else did.
People who made their dreams come true didn't simply go after it. They changed the person they were, in order to fit the type of person that would live that type of dream.
There really is nothing normal about being in love with someone. It's a million emotions with a million excuses.
If you have never met a woman that would never give up, then you have never met a woman that has seen miracles.
The purest form of faith happens when you reach the bottom of your reasoning and find there is nothing that you can do that will make sense out of what you have been through.
In my fantasy world everyone has a happy ending. No one is told who they should be, how they should feel, who they are allowed to love, what they should believe and how they should look. Sadly, everyone in my world can't seem to get along with one another because everyone is so darn different.
Give up trying to convince people who you are, instead confuse them. It is a lot more fun!
When you have a plan in your mind of what the best life is for you, but it doesn't match your life, you have pain.
If you have to explain your sense of humor, then you are performing for the wrong crowd.
When you are offered a miracle take it. Otherwise, show God your tail so he can move on and give it to someone who doesn't want to be in hell any more.
God will bring you a gift. However, it is up to you to stop shaking the same box and expecting something wonderful will fall out of it again. After a while, you are going to break that box and it won't remind you of that moment when it meant everything to you.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Often, love is a tangled web of lies that only a broken heart would weave. Seldom is dishonesty the whole person, rather it's the pain.
Forgiveness happens when you stop wishing for someone else to become what you want them to be.
Don't pursue anything that doesn't fill your soul with joy because you can always go to Disneyland.
Anyone can find the dirt on someone, but very few can wipe it from their own shoes.
Sometimes losses in life are not losses at all. They are simply the evidence God provides, in order to build a story so profound, that it will cause social change.
You will know the person who was meant to be in your life by how they make you feel spiritually. If they live in such a way that inspires you to become better then you have found someone you can evolve with vs. raise.
Evolving is not arrogance. It is confidence that won't be pulled backwards, by those that feel left behind.
There is an excitement in creating a life, rather than maintaining a life you are not excited about living.
Courage can't exist without action. Anything else is a lion without his roar.
When you understand what love is you will understand that mercy and forgiveness feels better than any form of revenge.
God helps everything come to pass. However, he reminds us that nothing comes to stay.
When you forget yesterday and embrace the new vision of what you are to become through the eyes of your best friend, you have found a new sister standing by the open door that was once closed in your heart.
If you have something over a person you're not in a relationship; you are in a situation.
Dreams are built around the word hello, but in the end fate only knows the word goodbye.
When you only know your faults and failures, you allow yourself and others to downgrade your dreams and belittle your wants.
Love will drive you insane, but never let it drive you stupid or blind.
You can ignore your heart and mind, but it will always find its way home.
The healthy should be reminded that we are all dying because it is through our own reminder of mortality that we accelerate our good intentions, into actions people can see.
Distance and time might keep people apart, but the heart and mind will always stay connected by memories, miracles and the power of two unlikely souls that were destined to meet.
If you continue to dig the same hole in the same place in your life, eventually you will be standing in a grave.
I've never been bothered with my conduct. I've only been bothered by people that don't get it correct when they gossip about me.
Sometimes another person's fear tells you that everything you're about to do is right.
The only healthy marriages that survive are the ones where two people became best friends and learned how to rescue one another, over and over again.
God is always trying to give blessings to us, but our minds are usually too full to receive them.
We have all at one time been stranded on islands shouting lies across the seas of misunderstanding, hoping the fog will carry our mischief to the distant ports in people's minds.
How can you follow your heart, unless you know why you have allowed it to be empty for so long and didn't have the courage to fix it?
This much is true: When you are about to effect the lives of hundreds of people, Satan will do everything he can to prevent it from happening. Often pride and anger are his best assassins.
I don't fear the future. I fear letting it pass by me, without ever trying to make it mine.
No one ever gets mad at being shamed by someone unless some shame is felt.
Stop expecting the world to affirm you as a person. Half of the world will like you and the other half will hate you, despite what you say or do. Christ knew this truth, but he did his life mission anyways.
Whether you deny your wounds or see them clearly, they bring a great source of power because they lived in the same place as your heart.
You will never get to your destination on time if choose to walk two paths through life.
You either live the life that is easy or you live the life that is difficult, but appreciate it more.
Buried emotions are caged nighthawks that have fallen in love with the moon. They don't understand the sun because they were born with the darkness of shadows in their soul.