The Power of the Pit--One Thousand Gifts, Ch 7

You would be very ashamed if you knew what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are.  You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemies--though that never occurs to you.  Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet [God's] beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is.--Jean Pierre de Caussade

Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love?  That Satan's way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling in my daily life than Jesus' [sic] way?  Why else get angry?  Isn't it because I think complaining, exasperation, resentment will pound me up into the full life I really want?  When I choose--and it is a choice--to crush joy with bitterness, am I not purposefully choosing to take the way of the Prince of Darkness?  Choosing the angry way of Lucifer because I think it is more effective--more expedient--than giving thanks? . . . Why? . . . because [I] believe in the power of the pit.--Ann Voskamp