Craig D. Lounsbrough Quotes

Oh God, please find it within your heart to grant me a heart that looks after itself only because it has first looked after others. And help me to realize that anything less is not a heart.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

If my heart is set on pursuing real treasures, my mind must be fixed solely on the privilege of enjoying them and freed of the obsession of owning them.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I want to have the eyes of an adult to see the world as it is, but I more desperately want to have the heart of a child to make certain that I never forget what it could be.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

To live a fantasy is to avoid a life.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Too often fantasy is not a rich elaboration of life designed to enhance our existence, rather it is our pell-mell escape from life with the intent of exiting this existence. And the most imaginative fantasy of all is to somehow think that I can do that in the first place.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

My decisions determine my destination long before I ever get there. And once I do get there, I suddenly realize this is not the destination I had in mind because what I had in mind was the fantasy that my denial had created verses the reality my choices crafted.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Through the eyes of men an utterly irrational birth followed by a terribly improbable execution are miscues of the most pathetic sort. And all I can say is that I’m immeasurably thankful that I’ve been given access to the eyes of God.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I am far too often the author of terribly poor decisions. Yet I must rest in the unalterable fact that God says I am far better than what the sum total of those decisions would ever suggest.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The difference between a ‘man’ and a ‘father’ is that the former shares his genes, but latter gives his life.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

If a father does not altogether embrace a life of uncompromised sacrifice as the core of all principles by which he nurtures his children, he is a father by birth only and no power on earth can ever or will ever make that sufficient.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

All too soon the garden of childhood is paved cold with the asphalt roads of adulthood. And while it is not within her power to halt this unrelenting progression, a mother can diligently guard this most precious garden and insure that the roads become gentle paths that wind through it instead of byways that kill it.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

One of a mother’s greatest gifts is to teach her child that to grow is not to timidly sit on some safe shore at water’s edge and clumsily grab whatever happens to float by. Rather, it is to deliberately step into waters both calm and turbulent in order to wrestle great things to shore. And that lesson can be best taught by a mother who stands before her child dripping wet.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Chilled ice tea that tempered tepid summer days lathered thick with humidity. Frothy hot chocolate that cut winter’s chill. Bedtime prayers that sent our fears scrambling in panicked flight. Golden bouquets of dandelions aromatically rich with the gift of summers scent. Family meals that wove yet another binding thread in and through the tapestry of those seated around the table. These are but the slightest sampling of the innumerable gifts my mother handed to this child of hers. And without them, my life would be impoverished beyond words to describe.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

With the gentle force of their words, the dogged warmth of their embrace, and the assuring touch of souls softly bared, mothers are silently shaping whole societies and authoring entire cultures that sit poised on the horizon of the future. And although we ignorantly relegate such roles to some lower caste status, we would be wise to understand that the role of a mother sets the cadence of the future.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

A parent holds within their hands the gift of a child to which they must expend the gift of themselves. And in such a monumental outpouring, the parent will lose both the child and the gifts given, but they will possess the far greater gift of knowing that they gave both.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Every parent is an artist, for the bared canvas of a newborn’s soul begs for the artist’s touch. And because this is so, a parent must prepare the palette with the utmost care, choose the brushes with poised caution, and mindfully attend to every brushstroke regardless of how slight. And such caution is utterly imperative for the emerging rendering will be both a legacy borne of the parent, and a life lived by the child.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The child you hold in your arms is your gift to a future that you will not see. Therefore, we must turn a blind eye to ourselves and selflessly pour the best of ourselves into our children while rigorously sifting out the worst of ourselves. And once we are utterly spent by such daring gestures, we will shockingly discover the resulting emptiness as astonishingly filled.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Have we ever thought to consider that the need to be loved grows because of its absence, but that love also grows because of its presence? And does this not speak to the power of love?

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

We’re making our decisions … or so we think. Yet in truth, ignorance, greed, and the scourge of immediate gratification are often the things that are making them. So if we’re going to truly live well, maybe the first thing we need to decide is who’s deciding.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

What insanity would lead me to believe that I possess the power, much less the aptitude to manipulate all of the consequences out of all of my decisions?

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

If I have not been both soothed by love and on the opposite extreme left devastated by it, I will never understand its power nor respect its majesty.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

No, I am not powerful nor do I wish to be, for it is God using my weakness that makes me potent and I would never wish to surrender that.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

It is not within my power to refuse the journey of life regardless of the nature of my fears or the depth of my selfishness, for the definitions of ‘journey’ and ‘life’ are indistinguishably synonymous. I can however sufficiently inhibit them and amply fight them to the point that I have accepted the journey, but the journey is now solely defined as my effort to forsake the journey.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I feign fullness, but in reality I am achingly empty. And it is because I too often sit at the table of the world instead of the feet of God.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

If I see only my bias, I have surrendered to a single myopic lens through which to view the world. If I dare to surrender my bias, I will spend the rest of my life seeing the world and throwing away lenses.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

It is my wish and most cherished hope that God would be pleased with my legacy, that lives would be changed by it, and that the world would be immeasurably better because I was privileged to leave a legacy at all. And if perchance I am fortunate enough to have these things come to pass, I can then rest in the fact that I have lived well.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Will I live yearning for a world that I need not yearn for because the message of Christmas is entirely undaunted in its ability to handily penetrate and completely subjugate the very world that I doubt its ability to survive in?

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Maybe I need to immerse the fabric of my soul in torrential nature of Christmas, and in doing so to finally understand that it is the very thing that can make the world what I so wish it were.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

If the amount of times we get up is just one less than the amount of times that we've been knocked down, then we're spending our lives lying down.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

With God, a mountain before me is soon to be a memory behind me.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

To grow is not to timidly sit on some safe shore at water’s edge and clumsily grab whatever happens to float by me. Rather, it is to deliberately step into waters both calm and turbulent in order to wrestle great things to shore.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

A commitment to never getting knocked down is in reality a decision to never stand up.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Denial is fear gone delusional. Acceptance is fear given to God. Engaging is fear overruled by God. Victory is fear banished by God.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I can bow to fear and flee the pursuit of great things. I can bow to God and engage in the pursuit of making things great.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

What I’ve yet to realize is that each time I work to avoid that which I fear, I have in that very same action forfeited the blessings that my fear blinded me to. And I’ve yet to realize that with God, the blessings will always and forever eclipse whatever I fear despite how absolutely imposing those fears might be

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I want to stand on the foundation of ethics and morals when the world around me would assault that foundation with all of its collective might, and in the standing I want to stand on the truth that that foundation will stand long after everything that has assailed it has itself has ceased to stand.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I want to stand on the truth that God has designed us to stand, and that the opportunity to stand is the opportunity to live exuberantly and gloriously.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Mediocrity is the companion of passivity and will not heed the call of great things. Courage is the companion of sacrifice and cannot help but heed the call of great things. And we are left of our own accord to choose one or the other.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

To live safely within the realm of possibility is to know nothing other than that which is possible. To live boldly within the realm of God is to experience everything that’s impossible.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I’ve always marveled that geese can feel a call stirring, rise on hardy wings to engage it, and without contemplation, compass or map complete the feat. And could it be that they achieve this astounding accomplishment because far too often contemplation, compass or map rob the call by sterile analysis when we should liberate the call through expectant obedience.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough