That phrase got me through the fourth grade.


I'd been sick with the flu during Christmas break, and the illness kept me home from school when the new semester started. I don't think I've ever been so sick.
When I finally made it back to school in mid-January, I discovered all the desks had been rearranged into friendly little foursomes. I roamed the classroom, searching in vain for my nametag. I finally found my desk, shoved against the wall at the back of the room. Apparently, my teacher assumed I wasn't coming back. Gee. Thanks.

To top it off, some of the girls I was friends with had deemed me a pariah of some sort during a slumber party. No one was speaking to me.

It wasn't my best year.
The year of the worst school picture ever.
The first (and last) "F" I ever got on a paper.
The year I learned correcting your teacher's spelling errors on the blackboard is not wise.

I spent recesses that spring bouncing a tennis ball off the brick wall of the school building, alone.

On one particularly wretched day I heard a secret whisper, as though someone were standing behind me, whisper, "This too shall pass."

How comforted I was by those words! I repeated them over and over, a mantra for my 9-year-old soul. Years later, when I'd learned to discern the voice of the Lord, I realized just Who had spoken those words to me, and I was thankful all over again.


Recently, I looked it up, now that we have "the Internet machine" (as my son calls it) to research these things. To my surprise, the phrase, which I cannot ever remember hearing before that moment on the playground, is an ancient proverb, appearing in Persian, Jewish, and Turkish  folklore, used to humble kings and lift up the afflicted.

It comes back to me every so often, when I'm struggling to accept a season of life, or when I need to be reminded to rejoice in the here and now.


What proverbs, quotes, and phrases are engraved into your life?
What is going on in your life right now that you need to take heed to these words? Whether it's a good thing like children growing up, or a negative thing like loneliness, or a work schedule that seems impossible? 

God is continually at work in our individual lives, and He'll use every method possible to demonstrate His love and mercy and grace. That truth provides a framework for Marlo Schalesky's latest release, Shades of Morning.
I was alternately convicted by Marnie Wittier's habit of storing her sorrows, hurts, wounds, and regrets in a box on the shelf; amused by the innocence and wisdom of her Down syndrome nephew, Emmitt; and confused right along with Taylor Cole as to how his life had turned out the way it did.
Best of all, the ending didn't fizzle out, as some do. I was surprised (pleasantly, I might add) right up to the last page. I've read inspirational books that weren't at all inspiring, but Shades of Morning is not one of them. It truly fits the genre description!

MARLO SCHALESKY is the author of several acclaimed novels, including Christy Award winner Beyond the Night.  A graduate of Stanford University, Marlo also has a masters of theology from Fuller Theological Seminary.  She’s a regular columnist for Power for Living and lives with her husband, Bryan, and five children in California.

Back cover blurb: Marnie Wittier has life just where she wants it. Quiet. Peaceful. No drama. A long way away from her past. In the privacy of her home, she fills a box with slips of paper, scribbled with her regrets, sins, and sorrows. But that’s nobody else’s business. Her bookstore/coffee shop patrons, her employees, her friends from church—they all think she’s the very model of compassion and kindness. Then Marnie’s past creeps into her present when her estranged sister dies and makes Marnie guardian of her fifteen-year-old son—a boy Marnie never knew existed. And when Emmit arrives, she discovers he has Down syndrome—and that she’s woefully unprepared to care for him. What’s worse, she has to deal with Taylor Cole, her sister’s attorney, a man Marnie once loved—and abandoned. As Emmit (and Taylor) work their way into her heart, Marnie begins to heal. But when pieces of her dismal past surface again, she must at last face the scripts of paper in her box, all the regrets and sorrows. Can she do it? Or will she run again?