A strong willed woman is often feared. But more often she is pushed to the tether of her patience, forced to bend down.

My mom is such a strong, independent, strong-willed woman, and she always taught me to accept my worth for how I viewed myself and female empowerment, and it's okay to be independent and also need someone at the same time. I kinda get to be both.

If you wish to spare yourself and your venerable family, give heed to my advice with the ear of intelligence. If you do not, you will see what God has willed.

I'm a big fan of independent girls who are strong-willed, vocal in their opinions, and have a sense of humor.

God grant ... that he may learn to understand in time, that who so is minded to do as he himself wills will soon enough see the day when he will find he has done that which he had never willed.

And what we say - that what He willeth is right and what He doth not not will is wrong, is not so to be understood, as if, should God will something inconsistent, it would be right because He willed it. For it does not follow that if God would lie it would be right to lie, but rather that he were not God.

The only thing God is afraid of is a strong-willed human.

The logic of the Bible says: Act according to God's "will of command," not according to his "will of decree." God's "will of decree" is whatever comes to pass. "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that" (James 4:15). God's "will of decree" ordained that his Son be betrayed (Luke 22:22), ridiculed (Isaiah 53:3), mocked (Luke 18:32), flogged (Matthew 20:19), forsaken (Matthew 26:31), pierced (John 19:37), and killed (Mark 9:31). But the Bible teaches us plainly that we should not betray, ridicule, mock, flog, forsake, pierce, or kill innocent people. That is God's "will of command." We do not look at the death of Jesus, clearly willed by God, and conclude that killing Jesus is good and that we should join the mockers.

For I am-or I was-one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all-a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named-but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joey's bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well-by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order-willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.

They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the "blaze of passion" often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet.

I think I was born strong-willed. That's not the kind of thing you can learn. The advantage is you stick to what you believe in and rarely get pushed out of what you want to do.

If you wish to spare yourself and your venerable family give heed to my advice with the ear of intelligence. If you do not you will see what God has willed.