Category: PARENTS

  • If you want to change and eliminate the problems which you have encountered because of your upbringing, enter into a loving relationship with God and others [in your life], and these problems will be resolved. When I learn how to love God, and train myself to love my brother, I will change and become conformed to the image of His Son.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality

  • If you are suffering from a trial, which you are going through because of [your] upbringing and education, and if you endure this suffering with your true self and you expose it to the light of the grace of Christ, then Scripture says to you, “That you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”(James 1:4) The following will take place: your true self will grow and become complete and lacking nothing, through this suffering.

    As for the grumbling soul, which is not joyful, but is always complaining about its upbringing in such a home, it will neither grow nor be healed.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality

  • People look at their homes as a place to complain about and to reject, and unfortunately, in the recent days, the culture that we live in encourages more of that. But My home is a place for me to be holy, to be saintly. And if I don’t realize this, I will be lost. I’ll be truly confused. I’m not living with my family so one day I could go to another family—that’s my goal. That’s terrible, as if almost I’m not able to embrace and enjoy the life I’m living. Same thing when I’m married, same thing with my spouse, my house—I have to look at this place—this is the place of my holiness, this is the place of my purity, the place of my charity, the place of my discipline, the place of my obedience. Where else can I pray and practice real virtue, unless I am with the people that I love the most.

    —Fr. Mina Dimitri

  • When we keep talking about the past, it’s a way to manipulate and control others.

    —Fr. Mina Dimitri

  • Therefore, let us not lay blame for the sins we have committed either on our birth or on anyone else, but only on ourselves.

    —Dee Pennock, God’s Path to Sanity

  • Every bad behavior comes from an unmet need.

    —Fr. Paul Girguis

  • “I spent whole years of my youth” I suddenly shouted, overcome by a terrible rage, “dreaming of being a thief, a murderer, a criminal, just so as not to be what you wanted me to be. And you can thank heaven I didn’t become one, for lack of opportunity. And all this because I lived with you, in this house.”

    Boredom
    Alberto Moravia

  • It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.

    —St Teresa of Calcutta

  • Correct yourself of your faults and hold fast to piety. Commit your conscience, your life, and deeds unto God, Who knows our hearts. However, look upon yourself impartially. Are you not indeed difficult in your character, especially to those of your household? Perhaps you are morose, unkind, unsociable, taciturn. Expand your heart for sociability and kindness, though not to over-indulgence and connivance; be gentle, not provoking, calm in reproof.

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

  • I realized that a huge regret I felt with my mom was the complete disregard I’d had for her time. I came to visit when I felt like it, left when it was good for me, and flaked if I couldn’t “handle” her that day.

    When a Wrong Can’t Be Righted: How to Deal With Regret