Hannah Brencher Quotes

Because you deserve dignity, beyond anything else in this world. You deserve a God, and a faith, and a belief that finds you dignified at the core.

We could build entire cities out of the stories of loneliness.

I know you're worried about me. Not because you think I am incapable but because you secretly have always worried that life would go by without my ever learning how to stomp in the puddles or fall in love. I can promise you I'll learn. If anyone is a teacher for that kind of stuff, it has got to be New York.

There is a definite romance that buzzes and ticks and takes you by the elbow when Christmastime arrives in the city. It's something about the lights. The way the wreaths dress up the streetlamps. How everyone seems to commute home at night with much more purpose, and I often found myself wondering what they were barreling back for. If it was a tree that needed to be decorated, or cookies needing to be frosted, or just someone worth holding all winter long.

And I was looking for escape routes all the time. Ways to not fully be there, to be distracted by other lives, the lives of people I knew from high school and college that were happening in different states and cities. I would waste hours comparing my life to theirs, sitting the two of them side by side and circling the things that seemed out of place in my own life, like the "What's Wrong?" pictures in the back of the Highlights magazines. I don't exactly know what happened that night after

And Jesus just acts like he's really annoyed with the guy and starts shooting back commandments. But right before he tells the man he needs to go and sell all his belongings to follow him, there's this really strange sentence. It's like it doesn't belong there. It's easy to miss. 'Jesus saw him and loved him.' The line was staring back at me through my screen. He saw him. And he loved him. Instantly. Like it was that easy. Like the man didn't need to do A, B, C, and D to just be loved. He was loved. He was seen. He was known. Already. He just had to show up and annoy Jesus. Showing up was all it took. And then being willing to let it all go.

...we've never really been alone. Maybe lonely, but never alone.

Good-byes hurt. And they happen too much. The only thing I know for certain about this whole good-bye thing? You have to say it sometimes. You have to get real brave, and bite your bottom lip, and let people go sometimes. Fully, fully. Whether you feel ready or not, you're still going to grow up and use that word a lot more than you ever expected to.

It's always in those moments when you've shunned God, or you've gone ahead as if you don't need Him, that you find yourself crawling back with pathetic little attempts to get His attention because suddenly you're weak and you need to convince yourself you're not alone on the bathroom floor.

Do small things. On repeat. And think about others. I think that's it. That's all. I don't even worry anymore about becoming a piece of someone's history because (a) knowing isn't the point and (b) sometimes our greatest points of impact will be the kind we never come to know about.

Don't always get so caught up in doing what you love. Instead, do what is necessary. Do what others need.

I needed to witness what it looked like when you eventually stopped asking questions and just started living the answers out loud.

One day I will lend this heart of mine out -- like a well-read library book -- to someone who'll decide to rip the return date straight out of the inner binding and never let me go.

Finally, finally, this is what bravery looks like. This is what courage looks like. It has nothing to do with dominating the day, every single day. It has to do with showing up and speaking truth. One true sentence after one true sentence.

With love, there's always more left over. Fear shrinks and shrivels. Fear has an expiration date. But love keeps on growing keeps on giving with more than enough for everyone.

It's easier to let fear win. Even though love covers all things, fear is what keeps us silent and keeps words unsaid. Fear keeps us standing in one place. Eventually, when it wins, it means we never got the courage to say what we needed to say. But the words are needed. They won't always fix things or mend things or make things better. They won't bring someone back. They won't stop a good-bye. They won't be perfect. But they'll be true. And maybe that is all we have ever needed from one another: true words written with a love that feels too big to pin down to a page with measly little syllables.

God is a lot of things to a lot of people but I don't think He is a cheap party host with limited grace to give out.

They were the kind of words you read back and every lettered limb surprises you because you never knew you really felt those things the whole time.

I learned vulnerability is a bit like those Russian nesting dolls, the ones that get smaller and smaller in size when you twist the top off and pull another one out. In the end, you're left with the tiniest doll, that one nugget. No more layers to take off. Nothing left but a surprise, the surprise of finding out the littlest doll is the most solid of them all. It doesn't hide inside of itself.

Remember: whatever is burrowed deep in one hungry soul is bound to be tethered to the hearts of many, many more.

More than anything, I hope you know that it matters that you're here.

...the littlest doll is the most solid of them all. It doesn't hide inside itself.

I could feel God. It was like he was setting fine fingerprints all over the moment. I could feel him in it, as if he were saying to me, "Girl, I'm gonna blow the hinges off anything you think a love letter is, was , or could be. If you would just release the grip, I could turn your whole like into a love letter.

Somehow, you've found me. I have to believe there's a reason for that.

The worship had already begun. It was my favorite part about the whole thing. There was something electric about everyone lifting their hands up to the ceiling as if they were trying to pull things down from heaven. They reached and they reached and I couldn't help but wish I would find a reason to reach my hands up too.

I'd sit the younger version of myself down and ask,'Yo, girl, what's the deal? Why so happy? Why must everything end so poetically?

Pay more attention to the dotted lines, not just the destinations. The dotted lines are the silent, unspoken victories of this lifetime.

Like why do we even have to go through meeting people when we know they aren't going to stay in our lives?

The stars are reliable, unlike any other thing in this crazy world. Leaves fall off the trees. Snow melts. Rain washes away all the things we wrote on the pavement. But the stars are relentless in shining.

Looking back, I wish that everyone could have that sort of moment: a moment where you realize that your hands are so impossibly small and this world is so impossibly big. And the two don't seem to add up. Maybe recognizing the smallness of your own hands is just the very first step to changing anything at all.

They weren't just people. And they weren't strangers. They were my neighbors. And I didn't know how to help them.

It's in those spaces of no control that a brave life actually begins.

I believe now that we're the enemy to the things we really want for our lives. We get really good at telling ourselves ugly lies on repeat.

Grace is letting something else - something so much bigger than you - carry you home. It's having and wanting nowhere else to be but in a moment that wants you and takes you just as you are.

Even though love covers all things, fear is what keeps us silent and keeps words unsaid. Fear keeps us standing in one place. Eventually, when it wins, it means we never got the courage to say what we needed to say.

Maybe we're all a how are you away from not feeling so alone in all of this today.

I always thought New York City would be romantic, like a boyfriend who would kiss my hand and throw rocks at my window to get my attention.

I pocketed strangers in my memory, one by one, and tied them closer for...all the ways they looked like me.

I cried because sometimes no matter what you try to hide behind - letters or texts or emails or a busy schedule - life still finds a way to barrel through all the distractions. And life still hurts. Even though it's beautiful.

I'm a do-something sort of person and that doesn't really mix well with the commuters of New York.

I think we worship these stories of leaving it all behind and going somewhere new, but I'm beginning to see that every one of those stories has the same truth holding up this romantic idea of leaving: The stuff you're not facing will follow you. It will get in the car too. It will pack a bag too. Leaving isn't the key; changing is. I'm learning that life isn't about the destinations we can boast about getting to; it's about all the walking in between that feels pointless when you try to take a picture of it because no one will understand it like you do. It's the in between stuff that fleshes out a story - gives it guts and transformation.
It's not about the scenery changing or the person you say good night to. The traveler must be the one to change. That's what makes the story good.

Being seen somewhere at 2 a.m. through a "like" or retweet didn't actually fill me.

If I could write an autobiography for fear, it would read like this:
__________

Hi, my name is Fear. F-E-A-R. But you are going to call me a lot of other things as you start to get closer to me. I'm terribly unoriginal. I'm like every has-been out there, but you give me way more credit than I deserve. You should keep doing that. I like it when you make me bigger than I actually am. I'm going to make you feel alone, and I like it when you believe you're the only one who's ever felt this way. You think I'm custom-catered to fit you, but I'm really no different than the brand of me your best friend wears. I'm a ballad lurking in the hearts of a billion people, and I will do anything to keep you from realizing that I am just the same song on repeat. You all know all my words.
I'm pretty jealous though. I want you alone with me at night. I'm not afraid to say I'm greedy or that I don't want to share you. I'm a territorial lover, and I would rather you not have solid and deep conversations at dinner parties or find a community that doesn't leave your side. I wrote you a story a long time ago, and I don't want you to figure out that you've outgrown the plotline.
I wonder why you don't get over me sometimes, but then the realization hits me: You come back because you know I want you. You come back because you know the sound of my voice. You come back because you know the way I move and how I shut you down. You've stood face-to-face with me so many times and

And that's the truth I needed to swallow: people don't step out and love for you; that's on you. You have to be the one to get down deep enough and whisper the words people can't always say for you - whether you believe in them full or not - "I choose you. I choose you.

You're worth it. You are absolutely, unbelievably worth it and you were made for mighty things. Keep pushing on. Keep pressing. Don't let anyone in this wide, wide world ever try to snuff out the light you bring. You have to know it matters. The world is going to try to convince you otherwise but don't listen. Please. Don't. Listen. You are a marvel. It matters that you are here.

I don't know what actually goes down in heaven, if heaven has a grand staircase or a theater where you get to see your impact in a "Crash" kind of cinematic adventure, but I do know our stories work that way--the imprints of ourselves we press into the palms of others have the power to be passed and passed through the hands of many. That the smallest things we do, never thinking twice about them, might be the very things that keep a person alive, and breathing, and standing on that day. I've stopped doubting that kind of impact because believing in it - believing in miracles in the mud of the mundane - gives you so much more purpose than not believing in it at all.

I think it's easy to stay angry at a world that never promises you invincibility but still manages to break your heart with the way some moments can make you feel so infinite.

Agape" is loving a person for exactly who they are - not who we hope they'll become with enough fixing. It's this idea that every person has their layers, so you can never confine a person to only what you know about them from the first glance. It's stacked on the premise that to love anyone is to hope in them always.