I give up sleep for nothing. Nothing less than writing, and it has to be a brilliant stroke at that. Reading something wonderful may keep me up for a time, but the process of creating is what makes time speed up and slow down at once. There are times when I write five or six pages in an hour, and there are times I spend five or six hours writing a page. On both occasions, time means nothing–– time becomes relative.

My spiritual life is almost never where I think it should be or where I want it to be. In the past year or so, especially, I have felt distant at the very least, and completely absent at the worst. Some of it has to do with time and work and school and relationships. Some has to do with doubt and suffering–– on my part and on the parts of others. I tend to turn to God and prayer only when I have exhausted my own human resources. Sometimes things seem so good that I feel like I no longer need God, and that I do pretty well on my own.

But, despite my insistence on relying on myself (a strong, liberated, and independent woman), I see God in other people, and I see God, more surprisingly, in myself. I believe God created me exactly as I am and loves me exactly as I am. On that same note, I believe God created every person as they are and loves them as they are.

I have long found myself trying to tell my story in a “Christian” way–– as a testament to God’s goodness, blaming the devil for my own sins, casting out the darkness with Jesus’s light, all of those things good Christians do and believe. At one point I came to realize that lying about my life was not God’s intention for me. I became honest about my feelings, what had happened to me, and God’s role in that. And that honesty is what brought me to the feet of Christ–– it is what brought me to redemption and forgiveness and unyielding love. Since thing, that has been my courage and my encouragement to others. This is how I see God in people, and how they, in turn, see God in me.

It is not about KJV versus NIV or left versus right or Jew versus Gentile. It is about me and Jesus. It is about you and me and Jesus. It is about truth and trust and vulnerability and honesty and love. It is about telling our stories with these things in mind. It is why I write. It is why I continue to live in the face of all those things it is not about.

Writing people’s stories has been the closest I have felt to God in a long time. Each person I interviewed wondered aloud why they were telling me everything they were telling me, and I know it is nothing I had done. God’s hand was on my shoulder through every one of those interactions. He gave me the strength to stay silent when necessary and gave me the words when I needed them. He allowed me to tell these stories in a way that served the work and that served my subjects. He filled my heart with empathy and my mind with beauty. God has given me the ability to use my own brokenness to help put people back together. There is no logical reason perfect strangers ought to be able to reach this level of vulnerability with me. There is no logical reason I ought to be able to write as I have been writing. All I know is God was there, and to quote Tim Seibles, "heaven is here!"