I found it. The journal I kept in my earliest days of college, naivete dripping from every word. I can barely read it. Some people don’t really believe what I write. Could I really be so innocent? I challenge them to make it through more than two entries before they start kissing my feet, begging [...]

I tell people I didn’t become an atheist just because I was angry at God, and that is true. One of the reasons I know this is because I did go through an angry phase right after I separated from Bob. My reasoning: I spent everything I had on pleasing God, and I lost everything: [...]

Vivacious described Lora perfectly. Always laughing, bouncing from one group of friends to another. I watched her from ninth through eleventh grade, wanting to be her friend. Finally, I got my chance. We both started working at the local Taste Toppers, a fast food restaurant in town. When you work together, you either love each [...]

Even though it all fell apart, and  while most of these didn’t last, there were things I liked about being a Christian while they did. Here  are five: 1. Church events: I had a lot of fun at church parties. 2. My youth group: in 8th grade, I had the best youth group ever. They [...]

I used to sing in church a lot. I am not a soloist, but I do very well in a group. Because I did well in a group, most people assumed I would do well as a soloist and I sang a lot in both churches. I was never good enough for anything beyond the [...]

It’s supposed to be attractive for women to be as naive as I was. In a rare conversation that included both my parents, my mom told me, “A girl who is modest, who wears longer skirts instead of short skirts, is much more attractive to a guy. Knees are just ugly!” She turned to my [...]

She introduced me to college and made me feel right at home. Anytime we had a question (and I do mean anytime–day or night), she made herself available to us. My freshman year, my suitemate and RA Marissa made a huge difference in my life. I loved drama, and joined the school’s traveling drama group, [...]

I had the misfortune of being part of the fundamentalist crowd that did not celebrate Halloween. We gave out treats (and tracts) a few years until we moved out to the country where we never had trick-or-treaters knock on our door, but the year after I turned six, my parents said they felt convicted about [...]

I have gone through many hairstyles throughout the course of my life, most of them unflattering. In the seventh grade, my hair turned from mostly straight to curly and frizzy. As this was a new phenomenon, I had no idea what to do with it. My mom had very short, straight hair, and had since [...]

In hindsight, it seems pretty arrogant and ridiculous but I used to think God had something special planned for me. It was the only reason I could think of that Got would allow me to survive. As a newborn, I suffered from a high fever the doctors weren’t sure where I had gotten or if [...]