I used to love the Bible

I used to love the Bible.  It was always on my tongue, in my thoughts.  Its words surrounded me with their beauty and insight and images.  Its stories were my stories.  Stories about an old man and his wife starting a nation.  About Jesus finding a coin in a fish’s mouth.  About the blindness falling from Paul’s eyes like scales.  About the world starting in a garden with two people, two trees and a snake, then ending in tribulation and judgment, fire and brimstone.

Every morning for much of high school, I would sit down at my computer and carefully choose a verse—a string of words, precious like pearls, which delighted me that day—and send it out to encourage a long list of people. 

But at some point in college, what had been life-giving cool water to me, what had been my greatest treasure, well, it became sawdust and ashes and desert sand.  It’s hard to describe what made that happen because it was probably a lot of things and some of them were my fault.  I became over-exposed.  I took it for granted.  I learned the original languages and started looking always behind the words instead of at them. 

But I also began to feel my treasure snatched away from me specifically because I was a woman.  I approached the Holy of Holies, but my toe on the threshold I was told: come no further, you are not invited here.  I don’t think that anyone ever told me that the Bible was for men, but it was guarded like water in a tower and carefully measured out.  A few times when I was thirsty, people said “let the men drink first” and handed me only the sandy dregs at the bottom of the cup. When I wanted to share the water, they told me that wasn’t my business.

I wrote a sermon once for a high school theology class, fully knowing the whole time that I’d never be able to share it with my church.  Of course, I never asked.  I don’t even think I ever admitted my audacity to anyone at the church.  But I knew what their answer would have been.  It would have been honestly felt and kindly meant, it would have caused everyone pain, so I didn’t ask.

My sermon was about Jesus’ love for his disciples in John 13, when he stripped off his clothes, got down on his knees and washed their feet.  Oh, how that love broke my heart!

But my passion for the Word didn’t seem needed, or wanted.  It was unseemly.

So I let it go.  I watched it slowly blur with misinterpretation, forceful exegesis, rose-colored glasses.  Until it seemed so out of focus it was painful to look at.  I just had to turn my face away.

But at night, when I couldn’t sleep, words would still slip over my tongue… “I shall not want… You anoint my head… surely goodness and mercy…”  “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels… bears all things, believes all things… never fails… I see in a mirror dimly… these three remain…”

I became invisible in church.  I never quit, but I had nothing more to give.  The scriptures too bright for my aching eyes, too hot for my weary touch, too holy for my sinful body, I whispered the words in the dark, and kept my face turned away. 

I put the screens of the prayer book and academic study between me and the holiness.  To protect me from the burning.  They held me up when I would have fainted from thirst and they provided a slow, small trickle.

But still, I couldn’t look.

Until now.

Last spring our parish priest approached me.  He told me that he had been reading this blog.  I had sent him the link so hecould see my book reviews of Charles Williams.  But he had read on.  He said he thought I had an important voice.  And he asked me to preach.    To preach.    A sermon.   In church.   To remove the veil, look at the scriptures, let the brightness shine full on my face and reflect it to the people of our church.

It’s the moment when you’ve been stumbling along a hot, dusty road and finally turn in at the garden gate, into the welcoming cool and green.  And you know you are home.  It may or may not be the home you started from, but it is yours to rest in for a while.

While I sat in J.J. Bean, the hippest coffee shop on earth, writing a sermon, tears flowed freely down my face.

God’s love still breaks my heart.

[[[The (partial) audio of my sermon this summer can be found on the St. John’s Richmond website.]]]

The Little One, part 1: Waiting

Now that a month of quiet rest has passed, I thought that I would write a little blog series this week, in three parts, on little Lucy's arrival: the waiting, the birth story, and her first month. 

Our transition to parents has been everything I could have dreamed.  It has challenged me personally to integrate the different parts of my self--my body, mind and soul--as God continues to help me grow up in His image.  The first step in that journey was relinquishing my control over Lucy's arrival...  For Clint and I that meant 12 days of anxious anticipation after her due date.

My whole pregnancy I told myself, "Many first babies are late, many of my friends' first babies have been 10 days late, I will be patient and my baby will come when she will come."  I remembered a Facebook post by a friend expecting an overdue baby, who gently reminded herself that in the past, women used to calculate a due date by season, "The baby will come in early summer."  Unfortunately, that gentle, patient ideal proved impossible.

My graduation from Regent had taken place on April 29th, about two months before my due date.  I spent most of May switching out my Arts Thesis library books (on autobiography and writing the self) for baby library books (on labour, breastfeeding, and baby care).  I spent hours scouring Craigslist and purchased all the big items we needed (bassinet, stroller, soft carriers, diaper service, car seat)  by the end of 36 weeks, so we would be ready if the baby arrived early.  Then I spent a few weeks crocheting, watching Jane Austin BBC adaptations on Netflix, and waiting.

There were some indications that an early baby was a possibility.  I came before my due date so many years ago.  Other family members had a history of early births.  I had a few symptoms and I was full out "nested."  But there were no signs of labour. 

My mom arrived halfway through June, a week before the due date.  I rushed to show her around Vancouver, stocking up on groceries, showing her brands and stores so that she could shop and cook for me once the baby arrived.  But by the end of that week, I had run out of projects to do to keep myself busy.  Every morning I got up hoping maybe baby would arrive that day.  Every night I went to bed a little early so I could be well rested if labour started.  I tried to embrace the everyday rhythms of life.  I cooked, ate and washed dishes.  I did laundry and hung it out on the line to dry.  I read.  I rested.  In the long evening twilight after dinner Clint and I went for leisurely walks around our neighborhood.  I had a constant appetite to walk uphill.

Clint's parents arrived, then my sister.  We ate dinner together most nights and tried to make pleasant conversation.  And we waited.  Everything was in a holding pattern, waiting for the curtain to rise and the star of the show to come on stage.  But she was being a diva.  We were star struck and completely in her power.

Day 3 past the due date, I wrote a note in my journal, "I have put my life on hold in eager expectation of your arrival this week, Lucy.  All my hopes and dreams depend on your arrival, all my plans for at least six months are focused on your care."  It was startling for me to realize that for the first time in my life, I didn't know what the future would look like, because everything depended on this new relationship.  University degrees and career moves you can plan ahead.  Babies you can't really.  You just have to live it out.  One line of laundry at a time.

A heartfelt sales pitch: There's room for you at this table

The table spread for one of our last meals on the "Food, Community and Creation" course last spring.

This summer is my first summer since coming to Regent when I won't be taking any summer courses.  Of course I'll be learning a lot about parenting, mostly by trial and error, but I'll miss Regent summers.  The professors are wonderful, the courses are unique and interesting, and the time to work is focused.  Plus, summers in Vancouver are gorgeous--not too hot, not too cold, the clouds finally clear away, the CSA's start delivering fresh veggies, and you just want to be at the beach all day.

The moral of this story is: if you've never considered it, you should consider coming for a Regent summer course.  No matter where you're at in your "formal" education, Regent courses are a great "sabbatical" for spiritual restoration.  If you don't need credit for the course, you can audit (sitting in on the course without having to complete the assignments).  And it's a great no-risk way to check out what Regent has to offer.

I'm graduating this April and I can't recommend Regent highly enough.  I've learned so much about my faith while here, deepening my spiritual practices as well as learning about the history of Christianity and finding at least some answers to questions that were following me around like the role of women in the church, my denominational identity, and my life calling.

I think my favorite part has been that Regent is not primarily a seminary (not to diminish the MDiv Clint is working on so hard), but it was founded for lay people.  So coming here doesn't mean that now I'm prepared to go into "full-time Christian ministry" (although I suppose that's an option).  It means that I'm better prepared to live and work as a writer, a wife, a mother, a teacher.

So what are you waiting for?!  Get on over here!  Check out this summer's course offerings (along with free audio downloads from our brilliant professors) by clicking here.

Change is not a bad thing!

I found this post today from earlier in the month, and I thought it was worth sharing.  I hope you enjoy!

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I've been realizing today how much I miss blogging, since I went on my little "first trimester hiatus."  I enjoy the personal contact and interaction that writing for a blog can give.  It also encourages me to reflect on what I'm learning about and put it into a form that others can converse with.

Today's lesson was that some days just don't go the way you plan.  When I sat down at breakfast this morning, I made an ambitious list of the things I wanted to accomplish today. My list looked like this:

-Make a batch of bread (one loaf cinnamon, one loaf regular whole wheat)
-Roast squash seeds lightly and make Granola
-Write for 4 hours (in two "shifts")
-Take a shower (yes, I have to write this in my to do list)
-Fold laundry
-Wash kitchen and bathroom floors (something that has been on my list for an embarassingly long time)
-Vacuum house
-Go for a walk
-Make baked beans for dinner (takes a while, start at 12:30 or so)


Like I said: ambitious.  In light of my last post about spending less time online, I'm trying to get more exercise while I get more done around the house.  I wasn't going to be disappointed if I didn't get it all done today, it is Monday after all, and there is lots of week ahead.

Things started out great.  After breakfast, I folded the laundry and took a shower (check, check).  But while I was in the shower I started having a little bit of "round ligament pain"--a feeling a little bit like a stitch in my side that is the result of my ligaments stretching to support the baby.  Nothing serious, but when it happens I need to sit down for a while.  So I checked my email.  Then I got going on the bread (mixing and setting to rise) and beans (setting them to boil).  But after 30 minutes, I needed to sit down again.  It hurt a little bit more than usual, so instead of attempting any more work, I sat on my bed with my feet up and read a new book I bought last week, The Attachment Parenting Book.  Then it was time to shape the loaves and get the beans sauced and in the oven.  But once I got the bread shaped, the pain came back.  This was not a day for standing, apparently.  Back to the bed and Attachment Parenting.  At this point, Clint came home and brought me lunch on a tray (yay for husbands!).  The bread and beans did eventually get into and out of the oven (check, check).

Why do I tell you all the tedious details of my day?  Well, I was struck in my reading and in my "lack of productivity" today how little we human beings like change.  The problem of continuity and change is, after all, the basic philosophical conundrum since the Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus first pointed it out five hundred years BCE.  For better or worse, we live in a culture that tends to value continuous, unchanging truths, and hold God's creation, including people to the same standard.

This can cause problems though, in how we perceive ourselves when we go through normal life changes like adolescence, pregnancy & parenthood, aging.  I think we implicitly hold (thanks to media and other influences) that the ideal human being is an 18-21 year old, in their physical prime of life, generally free from attachments, and with a mentally alert and full of adventure.  Anyone else seems a little less human.  We spend a lot of our adult lives trying not to change from that ideal: working crazy hours, avoiding attachments, zapping wrinkles, trying to maintain the perfect body.

I'll admit that pregnancy especially has been a constant reminder of change for me.  I've joked with a few friends that I must have secretly believed in the stork before now.  My body suddenly doesn't do what it used to, but instead it does all these weird new things.  A long walk in the park, or even an hour standing in the kitchen (on the day after a long walk in the park), can be exhausting.  I have a feeling that parenting will involve the same kind of change.  My friends with babies are always telling me, "As soon as you get in a rhythm for sleeping, eating, napping, everything changes!"  And change is tiring.  We can't keep going the way we have for years, we have to adapt.  But change isn't just about the world falling into chaos, even if I might feel that I've lost a little bit of control.  It's a good thing too.  It means new seasons, new lives, new growth.

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And speaking of new growth:

Baby and me - 26 weeks

By the way,  this post describes the only "slow day"so far in my pregnancy, when I realized that I had overdone it the day before (going for a long walk in the park by our house also known as "little mountain") and I needed to just sit and put my feet up.  I've been so blessed with good health!

Setting the alarm for 7

Well, tomorrow the alarm will go off at 7am and I will actually have to stumble out of bed, get myself all psyched up and head off to Hebrew class again. Oh the hardships of being a seminary student. I really do think it's inhumane to offer Introductory Hebrew at 8am. I can barely read forwards at that early hour, let alone backwards.

All my folders are ready and packed away into my backpack. I've read ahead enough to last me until Wednesday's New Testament class. I've practiced the Hebrew alphabet through once or twice again, with only a slight case of letter dyslexia. ("Which way do you write ayin, honey?" I ask as I trace imaginary Hebrew letters in the air with my finger, none of which are even remotely discernable to my poor husband.)

Of course, there are still a lot of books in the "Christmas Reading" pile especially any books that required thinking theologically or otherwise. Really, the Divine Comedy was a bit overambitious at this point... I read quite a few young adult novels, a Christmas novel, a few more pages of Cien Años de Soledad (still chipping away at it), skimmed a few books on women and Christianity that I picked up at the Regent bookstore for criminally low prices, and started more books than I finished, of course. But it was a really good and relaxing break. I don't think that I've been on a break in years where, outside of a week with family, my only responsibility was to pass the time however I saw fit. Or maybe it was a more personal victory, maybe I just haven't let myself be on break without carrying around a weight of "I ought to"s in a long, long time.

I got a strong dose of the sadness of the holiday season this year, the broken, raw reality of family life, indeed any life with other people who are not you. But also a lot of real beauty. I passed my preliminary Canadian Citizenship exam (that is, I played hockey outdoors). I ate a ton of wonderful food. I got to read a ton, just for the sake of reading. I even wrote a little bit (though unfortunately not on this blog).

The best part is, deep down, I feel ready for that alarm to go off in the morning, even if it will be a shock to my system and I'll be tired for a few days as I readjust. Deep down I'm ready for round 2.

School's out!

Ahh, school's finally out and I finally have a little bit of time to think. There are a lot of blogs I could write right now, but as I sift through and prioritize the ideas, one statment has really stuck out to me from my last post:

"Clint and I have been on a journey in the past few years to put together intellectually the theology we have learned in the school of hard knocks and compare it with the theology we were (and sometimes still are) explicitly taught, which was not wrong, but seemed strangely out of focus. A lot about Justification and such."

Justin made a comment about this statement here that has lead me to believe that perhaps I ought to clarify what exactly I mean by my offhanded comments about how the theology I was taught conflicts with my own experience of God in His word and as lived out in community. I will respond to Cindy's comment next, but first I want to lay this foundation.

Once upon a time, in the late 1990's, a teenage girl lived in the small suburban town just outside Indianapolis, Indiana. When her family moved to Indiana a few years before they began attending the First Baptist Church in town, just like they had where she lived before, although this one was an Independent Baptist church, while she had grown up on the sweet hymns of the Southern Baptist church. She was a quiet and shy girl, but she was very passionate about everything she did. More than anything else she was passionate about learning, and especially learning about God. If she had been a boy, her pastor probably would have marked her for The Ministry. But she was not a boy and she wasn't all that interested in The Ministry, she was just a girl who wanted to know God.

First Baptist Church was a conservative church with a really solid foundation--the Word of God. Sermons on Sunday were usually a simple explanation of a Biblical text with an application for the life of the believer and a gospel presentation with an altar call. Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday night, the teaching was solid, based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. The gospel was simply taught, "Do you struggle with guilt? Are you lonely? Do you feel incomplete and insufficient? Come to God and he will heal you." Nearly every sermon ended with a simple presentation of the gospel: God loves us very much, but we sin and this separates us from God. Jesus died to make things right between us and God. If we accept his sacrifice we can have access to God.

Now, beyond this, the church was dedicated to theological education. They encouraged young people to consider attending the Christian college that both the pastors had attended. They taught the scriptures faithfully in the Sunday Schools and were excited when the girls parents started an AWANA Bible memory club, although they did miss their old King's Kids children's ministry a little. They taught church members how to Do Devotions, reading the Bible and praying daily, then journaling about it to keep record of prayers answered. They encouraged missions, put on Christmas and Easter plays, Vacation Bible Schools and a basketball league, and once a year encouraged church members to give a Thanksgiving offering worth a whole week's salary.

The girl learned a lot of God's Word by heart. She learned some helpful methods for studying the Bible on her own. But as she read and learned to walk with God, she was puzzled when she looked around her at the church. Everyone seemed so surprised by her diligence, and sometimes offended, as though they felt threatened by it. In fact, the church itself seemed pretty isolated from the community. Although the gospel presentation was delivered weekly, there seemed to very seldom be anyone but the regular church members to hear it. The ministries of the church were not really based in building relationships with the surrounding community but preaching this gospel to it from an arm's length. The church was so zealous about a literal reading of the scriptures that they were suspicious of other churches in the community. Teenagers in the church, while very busy and successful, often felt dissatisfied with the church and some left it when they left home or got in trouble at public school. Adult leaders in the church fell into some pretty serious sexual sins, even a pastor was caught stealing money from the church "to make ends meet." For some reason, the girl was convinced that while churches are always made up of sinful and broken people, this church was lacking the power of God because of some misfocus in their theology.

She went to the college that the pastors had graduated from, because she felt that God called her to go there. It was a wonderfully safe and joyful environment to learn about God and his world, but the longer she was there, the more she felt that something was still missing in their theology, it was too comfortable and it wasn't translating to life, even inside the bubble. Too many students were experiencing genuine pain that was being swept under the rug. Too many questions went unanswered and there seemed to be a genuine fear of answering them. Too many students who genuinely loved God were burning out, falling into shame, and being rejected.

So, as she went out from school, first to study abroad, then through academic study, and finally as a graduate in the Real World of work, she was looking high and low for this missing theological wisdom. She stopped reading her Bible as much, it seemed to become encoded only with this depressing limited theology, and she couldn't break through to really see it as it was. She didn't feel like she was abandoning the Faith, she felt that as she was growing up and following God into different places and experiences, the Faith no longer had any room for her questions. She began to look at other churches that did have room for her. Some of them were intriguing, but ultimately seemed too far a leap. In her travels she found a few churches that seemed to accept her as she was and help answer her questions, they happened to be Anglican. Though she couldn't read the Bible much, she read a lot of books by Christians outside her school's "cannon".

Her first calling in the Real World was as an inner city teacher. She was light years away from the Christian environment she had grown up in. The students were dealing with crap she had never had to deal with, abuse, violence, death, injustice, sexual immorality. Her leaders were anything but godly in the way they dealt with things. She discovered in herself Anger and all kinds of other vices that she never knew she had. She began to feel the weight of the real spiritual warfare in the world. In some ways it was still just Life, but a distilled version of all the Life that her original church had never really seemed able to deal with--pain, suffering, injustice, racial prejudice, the real consequences of sin and guilt.

But one day she opened the Word again and, not really knowing where to start, she turned to all the verses that meant the most to her back as a teenager, the ones they didn't really emphasize at church or college, mostly passages from the gospels about the Kingdom of God. "Repent," Jesus had said, "for the Kingdom of God is at hand." A lightbulb went off in her mind. There was nothing wrong with the theology of Justification, the gospel her church had preached, only maybe it had been more appropriate for a previous generation for whom dealing with guilt was the main issue (see here). It was just that telling it that way in our generation gave the prayer to accept Christ's sacrifice a kind of finality. Everyone had low expectations for what happened after that. She had sort of settled for the world's definition that being a Christian meant praying The Prayer, then going to church and telling other people the Gospel and living a generally good life according to the guidelines set out in God's Word--being involved in church, not doing Bad things like smoking, drinking, having extramarital sex. But she don't know how many in her church had seriously considered that repenting meant taking up the process of handing over every Good thing in life that could become an idol (wealth, comfort, family, independence, education, success, career, romantic love), and following God no matter what it cost, no matter how uncomfortable it made them, and living for His Kingdom alone. This had always come across more like an add on a bit like a bait and switch sales tactic (God will heal your hurts... but now he wants you to be his slave). But the Gospel Jesus told involved a rich young ruler giving everything away to the poor and a man who sold everything to buy the pearl of great price, no room for mere intellectual assent to the doctrine of justification there. She knew that some at church and school had really gotten it, but it was missing from the most common gospel story.

After she thought about it a while, it didn't seem like such an earth-shattering revelation, it was embarassingly simple and had been right in front of her face all along. She had read it in a variety of books like Mere Christianity quite a while ago.

But, perhaps, she thought, this is a lesson we relearn every single day.


***As a note, I want to say that I owe so much to the church and schools I've grown up in, I wouldn't be who I am today without them. The purpose of this blog is not to blame anyone for their shortcomings, but to explain how I got to where I am now. In fact, I think that American protestantism is full of these kinds of ideas in various arrangements, and I don't want anyone to get the idea that I hate my old church or anything. I care for the people very, very much. Perhaps I critique myself more than any other.***

This week's thoughts.

A few thoughts:

I'm feeling homesick for a certain group of friends who have helped me through some hard times. They are precious to me and I miss them. I hope to see them this summer, but it can't come quickly enough...

Several times a week I turn to Clint and I say, "It just won't enter into my brain that I'm going to be finished teaching in _ class days (currently counted at 9), and I will probably never be a NYC public school teacher again. I can't even imagine being a full time student again." I am just in awe at how much these three years have changed me and how much I have come to identify myself as a teacher and how this is all about to change.

In the past few days I've seen three movies: 27 Dresses, which was cute and not as dismally bad as I have come to expect romantic comedies to be, and the two new Narnia movies. Even with all the changes that Hollywood has to make to bring a book to celluloid, I am in awe of the simplicity, complexity and beauty of the Narnia plotlines. Every line seemed to carry meaning and truth, such a contrast to the stupid jokes and gags included in most movies to entertain children today. It makes me want to read the books all over again, just to pick Lewis's brain as a writer and to enjoy a good, true and beautiful story. And this at a time when I long to read, but every book that I pick up seems somehow too emotionally difficult and involved to really be able to enjoy. Why is it that we are ashamed to tell stories to adults that have good and evil and happy endings and we reserve them only for children? And isn't it powerful that the Narnia endings aren't "happliy ever after" kind of happy endings, but are complex (e.g. Peter and Susan find out at the end of Prince Caspian that they will not be returning to Narnia, the children have to return to a war-ravaged England, the lessons they learn in their journeys are really painful questions of life and death, learned by "hard knocks," the humility and adulthood they carry back with them to the "real" world weighs heavily on their shoulders, just as it makes them glow with their king and queenship)? The cult of C.S. Lewis in America is a bit obnoxious, but he is my hero as a writer, and has been since I was small. Perhaps his books are not "literary" in the way we like to pile up prizes and agents and best-seller lists and literati, but they show a depth of knowlege and insight that makes Harry Potter and, indeed, a great majority of the books on the shelf in Barnes and Noble look silly and haphazard.

I think that Lewis's theology is incredibly deep, perhaps most because it is not just some theory derived by academics from years of dry study, it is deeply practical for the Christian believer in the modern world, and accessible even to small children. In The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe we see a clear story of grace. God has chosen us to be Kings and Queens, but sometimes we lose sight of that. Edmund is one of the most powerful characters in the book. Once he is restored, loved, forgiven for his trechery, he is completely changed and, as Aslan names him, truly just. This is a faith that truly deals with sin, not just brushing it under the rug and winking and stamping the passport to heaven, but a personal relationship of forgiveness that changes a boy from the inside out.

In Prince Caspian the children have new struggles, and they have to learn new lessons. Only Lucy is looking for Aslan. In this book, Peter brings his struggles with the helplessness of being a teenager in a wartorn world to Narnia, as Edmund brought his jealousy before. He abuses his power as High King of Narnia, and leads Narnians to their death. It is only when he realizes his own weakness (again), that he is able to work with the others for a victory.

Why blog about a children's book and movie as seriously as all this? Because I am struck by the "deep magic" of the story. It strikes me to the core. It powerfully translates the struggles of life, and, more than any other story I've read, the beauty of what we are becoming. When Peter makes the decision to go home, despite knowing he will never return to Narnia, he carries a strength that could only come from humbly walking with Aslan, talking to him, questioning him as a child, believing that he would never be the same.

Perhaps it's because I am just coming to understand that kind of faith, faith that has been knocked about painfully and defended to the death. Clint and I have been on a journey in the past few years to put together intellectually the theology we have learned in the school of hard knocks and compare it with the theology we were (and sometimes still are) explicitly taught, which was not wrong, but seemed strangely out of focus. A lot about Justification and such.

How boggling is it that a "children's fairy tale" makes these very adult questions more real and valid?

Be VERY careful what you vow to the LORD

Well, a few weeks later, I'm going to expound upon a sentiment that I mentioned in my last post: be very careful what you vow to the LORD. As I mentioned before I vowed to give up clutter for lent, thinking that that meant that I would clean up my apartment over break, and maybe try to stop using the internet so gratuitously. Well, the good Lord had other plans. On Saturday I got sick with a temperature of 102. I spent the rest of break pretty much stuck in the apartment getting better. I slept and slept and slept until I thought I was going to get bedsores. I thought getting rid of clutter was a job I had to do. God said getting rid of clutter was doing NOTHING for a week. Interestingly, I had been praying for a time of retreat for several months now, a time to get away from daily responsibilities and enjoy the presence of the Lord in silence and stillness. I didn't know that I could find that rest in the gentle sunshine of my own living room. I learned quite a bit about myself that I never would have discovered had it not been for the circumstances. Mostly I just had a chance to remember what it is that I truly love, that I am most passionately myself when I am reading and when I am writing. And I had a chance to listen to my work, to hear what it really is that I should be writing about, what has touched me and changed me about the past three years. It was phenomenal. I wish it didn't involve going through three boxes of Kleenex, but hey, whatever works.