I believe that everything I ever needed to learn, I learned from my dogs: Life would be easier if our hands were a different color from the rest of us. Teeth can be used to hurt or to show love; know the difference. Carpets are the best place to sleep. Love means that sometimes you need to be held even when you don’t want to be. It is easy to find happiness once you learn to eat alone and sleep with someone else in your bed. Unconditional love is not healthy, neither is unconditional anger. Scars make you stronger. Don’t hide how you feel. Protecting your people is the most important thing. Give only one warning. Make people hear you. Never let people say you are not as big as you think you are. Motherhood is hard work.

I believe that people, as a whole, always attempt to be right. This does not necessarily mean they try to be good. In fact, often times in the pursuit of the right path, we forget that while on that path, we must also be good. I believe that goodness is something that must be learned.

I believe that I am wonderfully and fearfully made by an imperfect God, a God who tries really hard not to be a helicopter mom, but forgets that His seconds are our millenniums. I believe in a God who is a first-time parent and doesn’t want to pressure us to be anything we are not. I believe goodness is our inheritance, that most people are not yet ready to claim. I believe in a God who is a terrible cook. I believe in a God who wants us to be good above all else. I believe in a stubborn God who made us to be like Him, so He knows that shoving goodness in our faces won’t do anything. But all those things are hard, and intangible, and oftentimes feels very far away. We are living in a world that makes faith, in anything, a battle against momentum, and one that makes even trying to be good feel futile. And I especially can find it hard to see the next sunrise from the shadows. The dawn is far off but we live in a world of innovation and electricity; there are people holding up lamps to follow and there are dogs, too. And they teach me how to be good.