i prefer elizabeth bennett.

i just finished reading "passion and purity" for the fourth time.

the last 3 times i read it, i was held captive by some crush on a guy. 3 different guys. probably. so i'd read it, because it's such a sweet love story. and i'd be like "awwwwww that's soooooooo great."

oh, younger allison. how different you were.

but this time i had a different reason to read it.

i've mentioned that i am thinking through the consistent war that rages inside me...the tension between reason and emotion. i think through life logically. i deal with my emotions rationally. i reason them away. but i'm not always sure this is best. and i think this book speaks to that. i hope for different things, and tend to silence the hope.

the book very much talks about acknowledging those hopes and trusting God with them. i think my habit of being rational is sometimes a form of not trusting God. i'm trusting my own ability to reason.

so, here are some great quotes about that very subject.

"I do know that waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within onself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one's thoughts. It is easy to talk oneself into a decision that has no permanence - easier sometimes than to wait patiently."

"Taken in a spirit of trust, even loneliness contributes to the maturing of character, even the endurance of separation and silence and that hardest thing of all, uncertainty, can build in us a steady hope."

"It would be the easy road if the desire itself simply disappeared."

"If the yearnings went away, what would we have to offer up to the Lord?...How would we learn to submit to the authority of Christ if we had nothing to submit?"

"The disposition...to leave the dearest objects of our hearts in the sublime keeping of the general and unspecific belief that God is now answering our prayers in His own time and way, and in the best manner, involves a present process of inward crucifixion which is obviously unfavorable to the growth and even the existence of the life of self." - T.C. Upham

"Besides this, there is the somewhat philosophical realization that actually I have lost nothing. We may imagine what it would be like to share a given event and feel loss at having to experience it alone. But let us not forget - that loss is imagined, not real. I imagine peaks of enjoyment when I think of doing things together, but let not the hoping for it dull the doing of it alone. What is, is actual - what might be simply is not, and I must not therefore query God as though He robbed me - of things that are not. Further, the things that are belong to us, and they are good, God given, and enriched. Let not our longing slay the appetite of our living."

"Obedience involves for us, not physical suffering, perhaps, nor social ostracism as it has for some, but this warring with worries and regrets, this bringing into captivity our thoughts. We have planted (in our integrity) the banner of our trust in God. The consequences are His responsibility."

"I was wishing that my wishes were what God wished, and if my wishes were not what God wished, I wished that I could wish that my wishes would go away, but the wishes were still there."