Quotes by Counselors

There are consequences to ignoring consequences that are a consequence of my blatant unwillingness to learn from my consequences.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I live now and only now and I will do what I want to do this moment and not what I decided was best for me yesterday.
Hugh Prather
In case you’re short on definitions, here’s one. Insanity: ‘Destroying the very things that sustain us.’ And if we’re so short-sighted so as to make such preposterous choices, then it’s not all that preposterous to believe that shortly our end will be in sight.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Because I had no awareness of who I was or what I needed, I found myself settling for a mediocre relationship rather than holding out for what was best.
Debra Fileta
It is the fool who declares ‘I am ascending the summit,’ while he’s toddling around in the ditch.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
A compass calibrated by my greed is a rather shrewd way to legitimize my agenda. However, true north on a compass such as this is a straight line to the edge of a really big cliff.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
In my impatience I become convinced that this desire of mine should have been fulfilled yesterday, when it belongs to a tomorrow that yesterday would have killed had I had my way.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Without mountains, we might find ourselves relieved that we can avoid the pain of the ascent, but we will forever miss the thrill of the summit. And in such a terribly scandalous trade-off, it is the absence of pain that becomes the thief of life.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The sure path to tomorrow was plotted in a manger and paved on a cross. And although this sturdy byway is mine for the taking, I have incessantly chosen lesser paths. And maybe it is time to realize that Christmas is a promise that I can walk through the world and never get lost in the woods.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The choice to avoid risk is the choice to avoid living, and to avoid living is one of the greatest risk of all.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Hope is a fruit of proven character.
John Eldredge
People-pleasers feel they must constantly be performing acts of service to others to gain acceptance. That requires a lot of work, effort, and energy. From the book: Removing Your Shame Label.
Eddie Capparucci
Easter is a marvelous affirmation of the genius of our design, but it is likewise the blunt acknowledgement that left to its own devices, the genius of our design will result in the destruction of our lives.
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
People build defenses around a weakness, not around strength. Where self-esteem is strong, a defense is unnecessary.
David W. Earle
The greatest gains that we will ever experience arise from the greatest sacrifices that we have ever known.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The line that we chart into our future is often more a circle that brings us back to our past. And it might be that there is some hidden intent in charting circles in that we can feel like we’re moving when we actually have no intent of doing so.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Fear says that what God has called me to is blatantly impossible. Selfishness says that the cost is unacceptably prohibitive. My humanity harbors other lesser agendas that seduce me to my own death. And I would be wise to believe none of it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
What is life but God's daring invitation to a remarkable journey? And what is human nature but a staunchly inbred tendency toward self-preservation? And because of the rigidly paradoxical nature of these things, the road of life is seldom trod beyond a few scant steps.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
A ‘good’ father will tenderly cultivate his children. But a ‘good’ father who is also a ‘brave’ father will let the children without cultivate the child within.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
When we actually refer to God’s blueprint, we gladly work in fascinated conjunction with it, suddenly realizing that any other action outside of that blueprint is foolhardiness and lunacy of the worst sort.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The central attitudes driving the Drill Sergeant are:I need to control your every move or you will do it wrong.I know the exact way that everything should be done.You shouldn’t have anyone else — or any thing else — in your life besides me.I am going to watch you like a hawk to keep you from developing strength or independence.I love you more than anyone in the world, but you disgust me. (!!)
Lundy Bancroft
Starting over is an acceptance of a past we can’t change, an unrelenting conviction that the future can be different, and the stubborn wisdom to use the past to make the future what the past was not.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
You are not made in ‘your image’. You are, in fact, made in ‘God’s image’. Therefore, which one are you looking for when you look in the mirror?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
When one person attempts to “fix it” for the other person, the connection of acceptance is snapped and the sender and receiver miss an opportunity for understanding.
David W. Earle
The central attitudes driving the Terrorist are:You have no right to defy me or leave me. Your life is in my hands.Women are evil and have to be kept terrorized to prevent that evil from coming forth.I would rather die than accept your right to independence.The children are one of the best tools I can use to make you fearful.Seeing you terrified is exciting and satisfying.
Lundy Bancroft
The priceless lesson in the New Year is that endings birth beginnings and beginnings birth endings. And in this elegantly choreographed dance of life, neither ever find an end in the other.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe the greatest hope of Christmas is that what it purports to be is exactly what it is.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am thankful that I can be thankful, for if thankfulness did not exist my heart would be irretrievably imprisoned by the crazed twins of acquisition and possession, and my soul would exist as a forever slave to greed.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
As long as we see abusers as victims, or as out-of-control monsters, they will continue getting away with ruining lives. If we want abusers to change, we will have to require them to give up the luxury of exploitation.
Lundy Bancroft
We want our children to know and believe the one good story. Every other story is a copy or shadow of this one. Some copies of it are quite good and shout the Truth. Others see only the faintest whisper of it, or, in its absence remind us of the Truth. We want our kids to know the one good story so well that when they see Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Frodo, Anne of Green Gables, Arielle, or Sleeping Beauty, they can recognize the strands of Truth and deception in them. Saturating our children in the one good story will enable them to discern Truth and error as it comes to them from the world.
Elyse M. Fitzpatrick
Whatever I ‘align’’ myself with are the very things that will create a ‘line’ into my future.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Real relationships are the product of time spent, which is why so many of us have so few of them.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Real self-worth comes from mastery, from getting good at something. It doesn't matter what. Then you don't have to worry about empty compliments. You don't worry about what other people think. You have self-respect.
Albert Borris
The miracle is that the brilliance of the miraculous can live in the blandness of the mundane. The greater miracle is that we have enough brilliance in our own blandness to see it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We can only be our best by giving, and so we always need to be in the process of giving or preparing to give.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Our prayers are something akin to delivering a list, verses surrendering a life. The former will always leave me creating the next list, while the latter will leave me creating a new life.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Being able to say, “No,” is a necessary ingredient in a healthy lifestyle.
David W. Earle
Too often there is this sinister greed that pulls at my coattails, subtly whispering in the ear of my soul that it is within my rights to tuck away a few dark trinkets to toy with when the tedium of righteous living gets a bit boring. But God would suggest that I empty my pockets.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I will either adamantly prioritize my agendas at the expense of the truth, or I will consistently bring my agendas into unrelenting obedience to the truth. And if for some reason you’re trying to determine who I truly am, the choice I make will tell you.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Honoring your word is the fiber from which trust is built.
David W. Earle
Her screams are heard across generations who dared not scream and died without joy,in silence and isolation.
David W. Earle
Christmas is God deciding to become what He never had been, so that we can become what we never could be. And so, God does the most improbable thing imaginable. He orchestrates His own birth.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
What rubs off on me is hard to rub off. So, I’d better figure out what I rubbing up against.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We violated each other’s boundaries with verbal missiles of anger disguised in the pretense of “just kidding.
David W. Earle
reconciling grace, saving grace of Jesus"[In regards to struggles and potential in relationship],..we are sinner with capacity to to do great damage to ourselves and our relationships. We need God's grace to save us from ourselves. But we are also God's children, which means that we have great hope and potential-- not hope that rests on our gifts, experience, or track record, but hope that rests in Christ. Because he is in us and we are in him, it is right to say that our potential IS Christ. We are well aware that we are smack-dab in the middle of God's process of sanctification. And because this is true, we will struggle again. Selfishness, pride, an unforgiving spirit, irritation, and impatience will certainly return. But we are neither afraid nor hopeless. We have experienced what God can do in the middle of the mess. This side of heaven, relationships and ministry are always shaped in the forge of struggle. None of us get to relate to perfect people or avoid the effects of the fall on the work we attempt to do. Yet amid the mess, we find the highest joys of relationship and ministry.
Timothy S. Lane
Sure, things die. Yet hard on the heels of every death there comes a birth. And if the life around me is being perpetually refreshed in such a relentless manner, why would I think that the life within me can’t have the same experience.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We are living out the drama of a pathetic story whose pages are smeared with our own handwriting.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
ALCOHOL HAS NO BIOLOGICAL CONNECTION TO ABUSE OR VIOLENCEAlcohol does not directly make people belligerent, aggressive, or violent. There is evidence that certain chemicals can cause violent behavior — anabolic steroids, for example, or crack cocaine — but alcohol is not among them. In the human body, alcohol is actually a depressant, a substance that rarely causes aggression. Marijuana similarly has no biological action connected to abusiveness.
Lundy Bancroft
Despite our battered exterior and in spite of the festering scars and rank filth that overlays it, there is underneath it all the pristine likeness of God Himself. And we would be wise to cast an eye not on the marred exterior, but to be fixed on the glorious interior.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Change is threatening to the status quo.
David W. Earle
I might define a ‘journey’ as something that life itself calls me to. And I might then define a ‘trip’ as something I create to avoid a journey by mimicking a journey. And while fear is most certainly part and parcel of both, the latter is emboldened by fear while the former surrenders to it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Impulsivity is something akin to spontaneously jumping out of an airplane and not realizing that you forgot something until about five seconds before impact.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Without a doubt, the most ingenious plan I could ever hope to devise would be to trade my plans for God’s.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Easter is the invulnerable tale of utter selflessness where at an inestimable cost God did for us what He did not need done for Himself. And that kind of ‘doing’ happens every day.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Sadly, in too many cases surrender is having been ‘outrun’ by fear rather than having ‘run out’ of heart.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Because thankfulness is the tonic that always cures the cancers of greed, envy and jealously, it should be taken in liberal doses daily.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Our experiences are the building blocks of the future hewn out of the granite of the present.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To fall down is to face the weakness of my humanity, test the mettle of my character, and push the limits of my strength. Therefore, falling down will tell me who I am far more clearly than most things I might learn when I’m standing up.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To incessantly blame others for my shortcomings is cowardice borne of fear, fed by fear, and haunted by fear. To be steadfastly accountable for my shortcomings is bravery borne of God, fed by God, and blessed by God.
Craig D. Lounsbrough