Bart Millard Quotes

It's hard enough to work and raise a family when your kids are all healthy and relatively normal, but when you add on some kind of disability or disease, it can just be such a burden.

I don't think I realised how stressed I was, being a single parent. It was really, really stressful. It's not easy on anybody.

Single parenting is sometimes just a case of sitting around by yourself in mild despair, not knowing what to do.

My illness is excruciating and difficult to cope with. It takes over your entire life and causes more suffering than I can describe.

As well as writing novels and doing short-order journalism, I am also the full-time carer of my husband, who has Alzheimer's. Each day feels like a race that must be run.

My way of dealing with the world has always been to make fun of it and observe it but not take part in it. That's how I became a writer. But when you have kids, suddenly you have to be part of things. It leads almost to a breakdown because your whole defense mechanism is now really destructive.

Stress exacerbates any problem, whether it's diabetes, heart trouble, MS, or whatever.

When you get sick and it's extended, you go through all these mental phases, and everyone handles them differently.

One of the great pleasures of having children is spending one-on-one time with them. Sadly, I could do that for only a few minutes at a time. I'd never say that ADD/ADHD is a gift or a blessing. And if someone says it is a gift, I'd love to return it.

Being a parent is the hardest thing in the world... the psychological toll it takes on you because these lives are in your hands. I take it very seriously.

I have a disease, but I also have a lot of other things.

I was diagnosed with asthma when I was 18 during my freshman year at UCLA. I refused to accept it - and I hid it from my coaches and teammates. But ignoring my problem didn't make it go away.

I've been overwhelmed; I was a single mother for a time.

My daughter lived with my wife being ill since she was 2.

Sadly, for some mothers, this experience can be made so much harder due to challenges with our very mental health.

A lot of people out there get hounded about things that are going on in their lives. You just find ways to handle it and go on about your business.

I wrote 'A Boy and His Soul' that talks about how my mother had lupus and my dad dying of a heart condition.

I just want to say to anybody out there who suffers with chronic pain, I feel you. It takes over your life. It affects you emotionally, mentally, physically.

As I got older, my life become a whirlwind of homework and responsibilities. The hospital became my retreat, a place to gather my thoughts and focus on my health. The nurses are my friends as well as my caretakers. The doctors are my parents as well as my physicians.

There is very little magic in the world of the chronically ill.

What happens when you have an illness where you're never going to be healthy? Does that mean I'm never going to have a life? Am I never going to do anything or be anything other than a sick kid?

Everyone has a bad day now and then.

The life of any chronically ill person becomes extremely isolating.

I feel like everybody's got their health issues and their battles, and yeah, mine go up and down. It's never really over.

People on a daily basis walk up to me, panic, and tell me something extremely graphic and violent about their life.