2014 In Review

Every year I do the same thing.

Sometime around the end of December or beginning of the New Year I write a year-end review in my journal. I reflect on the year’s highs and lows and usually will reflect how my relationship with God progressed or regressed.  The following is an excerpt of this year’s:

* * *

January 2, 2015

About a year ago I rounded up 2013 in a very angry and bitter manner. I know why, and I am ashamed to remember it. I can only say that I am sorry that my lack of faith and my selfishness made me dishonor God in such a way.

2013 was a year of trials, 2014 was a year of…what?

Honestly, I have mixed feelings as I write. The end of 2014 brought an end to something that I’d been holding on for a while. My old love is officially old business; he has really moved on. How do I feel? I am neither bitter not jealous, just a bit… I don’t know… Is it wistful? Sad? Maybe just a bit resigned to the way my heart chooses to work. How did Anne Elliot say it? We women tend to love the longest even when all hope is gone. It’s silly, and to the most experienced I’m sure it’s laughable how in love I’ve always been the one to unreservedly give my heart to someone, and when it doesn’t work out it is the one that always lingers. But I have not been alone all this while, because despite the loneliness, the discouragement, the failed attempts, the uncertainties and the setbacks of this year, I end it in victory.

I have returned from my first day at my new job in a position that seems to have been tailored just for me, my skills, and my attention-level. It’s like God himself took that mental checklist I had about the job I needed and led me to it at the perfect time. I have finished December having passed my certification exams, I am planning to buy new gear—and have the funds to get it. I am starting a new business, I have acquired a valuable investor who believes in my vision. My family is healthy (I can hear their laughter outside my room), home is a warm place. I am happy, blessed, and so incredibly favored by my Heavenly Father. Is it presumptuous for me to feel warm and fuzzy when I think that the great King of Heaven loves me—indeed, favors me? Is it insane that at night the last thought I have is a prayer to Him and in the morning my first conscious thought is to breathe His name?

* * *

Unlike all the other years, there will be no resolutions this year.

There will only be a single prayer request every morning and every evening of every single day of the year. Yes, I will batter the gates of heaven every morning and evening with this single request.

Show me your will for my life.

Teach me to be able to discern your voice even in the noise and bustle of everyday life. Once I know your will and once I know that it is you speaking to me, empower me to obey you.

As to my heart—my foolish heart—I’ll leave it with you. I’m really, really sick of dealing with its excesses. So…this year I’ll trust you first to heal it and then to set it to rights, so that my heart will overflow with thankfulness and praise instead of aching from unfulfilled longing. Let it soar like an unfettered bird and let it sing with joy because of the hope that you instill in me.

For now, my heart beats steadily, strong and sure in my breast. My life feels very warm and quiet for now, and I like that just fine, for I’m gearing up for a very busy year.

What I learned in 2014 is that life with God is an adventure.

So with that in mind, Welcome 2015.

Mara

We decided to forgo the weekly potluck and came home immediately after the service. We had a quiet lunch, Mara and I, of vegetable soup and quesadillas, while listening to a guitar concerto in the radio.

As we ate I marveled at my silliness. It hadn’t been as scary as I’d thought; in fact, I had almost enjoyed it. And though my mind had drifted off for long spaces of time during the service, my musings for the most part hadn’t been morbid. The people I’d known before hadn’t chewed me out, either. The biggest surprise, however, was that Mara and I hadn’t killed each other on the drive there and back home. There was a subtle change between us, and I did not know how it had happened. It was just very odd to discover that though neither one volunteered to begin or carry any form of conversation, the air was not tense as it was wont to do whenever my scatter-brained older brother was not around to liven things up.

“Do you want to go back for the afternoon service?” Mara asked as we cleaned up. “Some Gospel singers from out of state are coming to sing.”

I shook my head, “I’ve had enough for today, I think.”

Mara scraped something from the kitchen stove, “Well, I suppose it would be too much to ask.”

I regarded her warily from the sink where I was drying the dishes. Was she trying to start a fight? “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She frowned, “It’s not supposed to mean anything. Calm down, Tanya!”

“Don’t tell me to calm down! It’s not like I’m angry or anything.” The dishes clattered loudly as I stacked them in place as if belying my assertions, “You always think the worst of me,” I muttered.

“Don’t give me that.” Mara threw her cleaning rag on the sink and proceeded to wash it clean, “You are the one who suddenly wanted to go to church, so I took you with me. You didn’t want to stay for potluck, I brought you home. I am way past forcing you to go to church. I was simply offering to take you. Do I get a ‘Thanks’? No. Do I expect it at this point? Not really. Just don’t shoot my head off for trying to be civil.”

Her words stuck me. I didn’t exactly agree with her sentiments—she somehow always managed to verbally outmaneuver me—but the revelation that she wasn’t entirely trying to antagonize me left me speechless for a time.

“I’m sorry,” I said after a while. My tone was subdued from the effort of getting down a huge slice of humble pie, “I didn’t know—I thought…” I sighed, “If you are going I’ll join you. I can drive if you want.”

Mara wrung her now clean rag and hung it up to dry. “I wanted to hear the concert, but I had originally thought to spend the day up there. Going back in the rain and then finding a place to park would be an absolute nightmare. Anyway. I thought I’d go see Alma. She’s not doing so well after her surgery.”

“Ok.” I said, as if I had an idea who Alma was.

“You going out today?”

“Pfft! I never go out.”

She looked surprised, and I wondered what it was she thought I did on Saturdays when she was out the whole day. For the sake of our new-found truce I didn’t volunteer any information.

“I think I’m going to do some homework. Or study. I have some big exams coming up.”

“It’s the Sabbath.”

“I’ll take a nap then.”

“Ok. I’ll be back in the evening.”

“Take care.”

Fifteen minutes later Mara left, and I remained at home to listen to the rain.

 

Part 21 – If You Only Knew

Return to Hilltop Church

I remembered Mara’s Hilltop church in all its faded glory.

The imposing gray Romanesque façade rising above the busy, dirty street—the broad, shallow steps leading up to the impressive portico and a trio of wooden doors —the pigeons flying out of the unused bell tower—the terraced grounds bordered on all sides by wrought-iron fencing—it was familiar and alien to me at the same time. I wondered at Mara—would she not have liked to attend a smaller church—maybe like Zuri’s? I could not account for why she chose to drive all the way to the inner city to Hilltop church full of people and a sea of faces, when there were smaller churches—of her denomination too—much closer to home. But I figured Mara’s subconscious thing for cathedral-like places of worship was a remnant of her shameful Catholic past.

It was raining and crowded in the portico, so I could not wait for Tony outside, and as Mara and I shared an umbrella, I had no choice but to follow her up the steps and into the church.

There were greeters at the door and at the lobby. They were the deaconesses. They wore name badges on their sober navy-blue suit ensemble. All of them wore flat shoes, flesh-toned nylons, and the hem of their pencil skirts fell below the knee. They greeted me warmly and handed me a church bulletin.

I’d not been shot down—yet.

Despite myself, I glanced around me curiously, stealing glances at people’s faces seeking out any familiar features while I waited around for Mara to finish speaking with this or that church sister. Once she was done, she looked at me, and I could see she was surprised that I was still sticking around, “Where is your friend?”

I had not seen him, “I don’t know. Maybe he is running late.”

“Sabbath school is about to start.”

“Can I wait for him here? I’ll join you once he gets here.”

“Don’t you want to go with the young people?”

I bristled at the thought, “Do I have to?”

“No. But there’s only older people where I’m at.”

“I don’t mind,” I shrugged, thinking back to the Monday night study group—they were all old.

“As you wish, then. Fifth pew from the front, left side.” Mara said, as if I could forget the spot we’d sat at for years. There we’d sat when, decked in our best, we had first come to this church–back then father had been holding my hand as well as Mara’s. There we endured the pity and inquisitiveness of our brethren some years later when Mara and I came in by ourselves with scandal trailing behind us. There I’d writhed and suffered agonies pretending that life was OK and growing increasingly angry at seeing Mara’s enormous efforts to keep up the act. All this, and Mara still wanted to know why I had left the church? I shook my head, and tried to clear my mind of things from the past. I was trying to give myself a second chance. I had to let things go…right?

So we parted; Mara went in through the doors to the sanctuary and I went to the far left, to a little hidden bench next to a fake palm tree where I could see the people who stepped in through the main door. I sat and I waited and waited for Tony to arrive.

But he didn’t come.

 

Part 20 – If You Only Knew

Devotion, emotions, the kitchen and God

My love of the kitchen goes back to my infancy, back when grandma and grandpa still looked after me while my parents worked. I lived a happy childhood in the big grey family home located on the mountainous, sparsely populated fringe of southern Mexico City. We lived on a very quiet house located on a very quiet street were hardly any cars passed by; getting the mail was the biggest event of the day (the mail was delivered by a guy in a motorcycle), and really—aside from the variations in weather that could go from intensely sunny to oppressively gloomy or even stormy from one day to the next, there was no change or variation in the tenor of life. It was a very gentle time.

My life centered about everything related to the house. Whether it was seeing to the upkeep of the family home, plants, and sundry pets with my grandfather, or “helping” with laundry or the cleaning with grandmother, I learned to love being at home—especially in the kitchen.

I was grandmother’s assistant. I remember the infinity of peas we shelled together, as well as the never-ending rivers of various soups we prepared: vegetable soup, tortilla soup (which we call chilaquiles), potato soup, fideos, coditos, chicken caldos, alphabets, et al. We peeled potatoes and carrots by the truckloads, de-feathered chickens galore, and when I, the humble neophyte, was deemed ready, I was given a knife and taught how to strip a cactus of its thorns. After all the kitchen activities were completed, with kitchen wiped clean and the dishes put away, grandma would make some tea, in preparation for the family to arrive and find the house filled with the delicious aroma of chamomile.

Grandfather was instrumental in fostering in me a love for experimentation the kitchen. When Grandma was not around he would steal in there and make various concoctions using mysterious herbs he’d gathered in the mountain. I witnessed many explosive reactions in the kitchen when he jammed up the blender with fruit for a refreshing mid-day drink. He would leave a mess then just as he did whenever he chopped up an onion and made a giant omelet for the two of us—wrong, the three of us. He always shared his repast with the cat (as did the cat with us now and then: whenever grandfather bought him a can of sardines, grandpa and I ate our share with gusto along with plenty of warm tortillas and pico de gallo). Grandpa taught me that food was meant to be shared.

My formal training in the kitchen began with mother once I was a teen, but by that time I was already aware of the most important rules of the kitchen, besides “safety first” of course:

Cook from the heart. If you’re not happy, your food won’t be good

And the corollaries to that are as follows

• If you’re angry, eggs will be spoiled, and hot food (as in spicy food) will burn the mouth
• If you’re feeling lazy or don’t feel like cooking, your rice will not properly cook and will burn on the bottom.
• If you’re sick, don’t even step foot in the kitchen. Everything will go to the dogs.

* * *

Everything in me was averse to cooking one day last week. I was tired from being in front of the computer working on a design, and trying to communicate with a finicky client on a rush order. I was getting a pounding headache too. I did not want to deal with the kitchen, and cleaning up after cooking on top of that. But I didn’t want to eat tacos from across the street, and besides, my mother who was coming from work deserved more than Del Taco. So on I went to the kitchen and gathered all my ingredients on the countertop.

And then I thought.

How am I gonna cook if I’m feeling like this? The way I’m feeling, my rice is not gonna cook well, my food could go to the dogs (figuratively speaking, for we have no dogs). I can’t do it!

I looked at my ingredients: the finest vegetables and legumes, red-ripe tomatoes, smiling white onions, gentle mounds of rice, tumbling potatoes. Perfectly good ingredients bought with hard-earned money. They deserved my respect.

And so, rather than it being an exercise of fake it (i.e. happiness) ‘till you make it, I began preparing the meal with care. I wasn’t particularly happy, and I was still tired and my head was hurting more and more with the heat of the oven, but I concentrated on doing my best on preparing every dish. The result was food that really tasted good.

I revisited my idea on the attitude of cooking. And I thought that perhaps it could be tweaked a bit, or maybe changed altogether.

* * *

Devotion goes past emotion.

How else can a chef consistently make good food even when his personal life is bleak, and he knows that the woman he loves won’t call him again? Or how can a musician play the performance of her life when she knows that on a hospital room in a far off country a loved one is dying? It’s all about devotion. Giving something the time and care and energy that it deserves in order for it to be done right, even when life is not making it easy for you to do so, is devotion.

* * *

We moved to California, and ever since I’ve never returned to my family home. I was blessed to see my grandparents every few years or so, and the love that I had for them only increased with time and distance.

When my grandma died after struggling with cancer, my world as I knew it seemed to shatter. It was seriously one of the most difficult times of my life, and for a while I thought I could not comprehend God. I could not draw to him. How could he take her away like that? Why did she have to go through such intense suffering, such anguish? Life did not make it easy for me to do the right thing: which was to draw to him and trust him.

When we as humans rely on emotion or on “feeling” a need in order to draw closer to God, we will just drift. Devotion goes past the emotion; it goes past discipline, too. Emotion will mean that you will be led this and that way because your fickle and volatile heart dictates what you do. Discipline often makes it necessary to remove the heart from the equation, because it’s doing what one ought to do for the sake of the better good in the end. But devotion is all about the heart put in its proper place.

So my attitude was, I’m angry at you God, I don’t understand you, or your motives, and perhaps I never will. But don’t let this be a matter to break us apart. Please give me solace, and continue to anchor my life, continue to give it purpose. Continue to guide me as I open your word and try to learn your will for me today…

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice…do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard you hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Phil 4:4-7

What is that? You guessed it–Devotion! Despite what life throws at you, your heart and mind is kept safe in Christ. That is a promise we can’t do without.

* * *

Grandma has passed away.

I miss her, but I have placed my hope in heaven. My heart too. One day Grandma and I will be reunited, and I’m sure that my mansion in heaven will have a HUGE kitchen (or an equivalent of such). And guess what I’ll be doin’?

That’s right. Cooking.

Oh, and by the way…

You’re invited.

Antonieta

Until Mara’s conversion to a new religion back when I was eleven years old, we had never been particularly God-fearing nor religious. The weekends had always been entirely my own before then, and while I had been encouraged to be good and pray before going to bed, none of those ideals were ever enforced in our home.

Our home life changed drastically on that fateful day Mara decided to join a church full of weirdoes who took their religion much too seriously. Mara stopped wearing jewelry and makeup. She became a vegetarian, abstained from coffee, tea, sweets, and salt. She then began introducing hell into our home.

The way we fought and quarreled because she wanted me to join her in going to church, the way she criticized my appearance and anti-social tendencies when I began going to High School, and the way she one day hit me across the face because I had dared tell her that her God was a tyrant made me re-think my idea of hell. It was something that was experienced while alive as well as after we died.

It was during that time when Grandma moved in with us. Grandpa, Dad’s father, had passed away and Grandma was in need of healing in her time of grief and nothing seemed more convenient to that end than a change in scenery and surroundings.

At first I had been extremely wary of the woman. My maternal grandmother had not made herself loved and had even terrorized those closer to her until the heavens deemed it proper to relieve humankind from that querulous woman with the bellicose disposition. I suspect even Mara breathed a little easier after her own mother died.

But Grandma Jovita was much, much, different. She had a heart of gold, a honey-sweet temperament and a patient gentleness that I found absolutely irresistible. Her first words to me had been, “There’s mi nieta Antonieta!”

Ah!

It was the Antonieta that did it. No one else called me by that name, and hearing it from her brought in a rush of memories…

Before they had moved with Auntie Agustina in Dallas, Grandpa and Grandma had lived in the family home in Mexico. We’d gone vacationing there one summer back when I had been a small child, and if my memory is to be relied on, I spent the bulk of my time with her while Mara and Father went on days-long trips to who knows where.

Grandma had aged considerably since then, so we did not take daily walks into the sunshine as we had done when I had been a child. But she was content with sitting in our garden dozing or humming to herself as she embroidered. I practiced my Spanish with her.

“You didn’t bring your guitar with you, grandma?”

“Child, I haven’t played for many years”

“What happened to it?”

“It’s back home.”

“With Auntie Agustina?”

“No. Home.” I saw her eyes take a dreamy, distant look. Did she miss her old home back in Mexico?

“Are you tired, grandma?”

“A little, mijita. But I must keep working on this. It is to be yours when you get married.”

I hooted, “Like that will ever happen!”

“Everyone says that. I used to say it myself. I must have been around your age when I had my first proposal.”

“Fourteen!”

“Fourteen, my dear. But I had my lands, I had my own farm to run. Why would I ever need to marry? Still, a woman always needs a companion and protector, so in the end I married Eustacio who was the poorest of all my suitors, but the one whom I liked best.”

I wanted to know more about it, and would have asked, but looking at her quivering smile and her wistful gray eyes I knew that it was best to change the subject. I did so without realizing that it would make her even sadder.

“Grandma. Do you still believe in God?”

She started,

“What? Yes!”

“Even though he made Grandfather sick, and then took him away from you?”

“If it is his will that your grandfather had to go in that way, then who am I to say anything?”

“But Grandpa was good!”

“Your grandpa was good. But who can understand it all? He’d been so healthy and lively even on his last day. He even went to walk the dog and returned with a bag full of oranges. He asked me to peel him some for his breakfast. Suddenly he just collapsed. He didn’t even cry out. It was the dog who began barking like crazy. So they took him to the hospital, but he never woke up.”

I cut in, worried because she had worked herself up to tears, “I’m sorry Grandma. I didn’t mean to—”

“—I don’t know why God had to take him away like that. I—I—just—I wish he’d taken me too.”

Mara came in at that moment to intervene. She gently led Grandma into the house, then came out and gave me an earful.

Later when the sun was going down I sneaked into Grandma’s room. She was still in bed; her eyes were open and she was alert but very quiet.

“What is it, Antonieta? Why are you so far away?” she extended her arm to me and I took her hand, gingerly stroking the soft, age-spotted, paper-like skin on the back of her hand.

“Grandma. I’m sorry” I said, sitting down on the eiderdown cover.

“Sorry? For what?”

“I’m so stupid. I didn’t want to make you cry.”

“You are not stupid.”

“Oh yes I am.” I began to cry, “And wicked too. So wicked and evil. You just don’t know the things I do and the things I think about.”

“No you are not wicked. You are sweet and kind and good. You’re just going through a difficult time. We all go through it.”

“But I don’t believe in God.”

“Oh, mijita. Why?”

I couldn’t answer. I just continued crying. She scooted over a little to give me room, and once I had lain down next to her I just let go and cried and cried. It was a good thing Mara had set a box of tissues next to grandma’s bed, because I made good use of them.

Once I’d grown calmer, grandma spoke, “My little one. I love you very much. No matter what silly or awful things you may do I will always love you and you will always be my beautiful Antonieta. Can you believe me? Now, I am your grandmother. But God is your maker. He is your father, too. And he loves you very much. That’s who he is. He can’t help but love you. Yes—Yes, he does love you mijita. Much more than I can ever love you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“And no matter what you’re going through, even when you’re in pain, you can always say the Lord’s Prayer, and he will listen and help you. Do you want to pray with me?”

“Ok”

“Let’s pray together”

“But you can’t kneel”

“My dear, you’ll have to do the kneeling for the both of us.”

I knelt beside the bed and took her hand. And just as she had taught me to back when I was a child, we prayed the Lord’s Prayer.

“Now repeat after me . . . ‘Our Father in heaven,’”

“Our Father in heaven,”

“Hallowed be thy name,”

“Hallowed be thy name . . .”

When we finished praying I once more put my head in her pillow with my hand clasped in hers. In silence we watched the darkness steal in the room. I felt a strange drowsiness come over me, and with my last conscious thought before I succumbed to sleep I prayed to God–Grandma Jovita’s God–to keep my grandma safe and healthy for many years to come.

 

Part 17 of If You Only Knew

An Interlude of Misery

Things with Terry remained strained. On the surface He was pretty much the same as usual, only more quiet. I was the awkward one. I could not meet his eyes for the life of me. For two days we worked in that terse environment, until relief came through a bright-eyed perky freshman who volunteered to help after school.

To Terry went the job of training her, and she was so eager and willing that she eventually she took my place in processing books and shelving, and other librarian duties. Meanwhile I fully devoted my time to the after-school tutoring services—rightly so, for my grades were the best. When I’d first came to the job of tutoring at the library, I was more advanced than most high school applicants, and even though I had technically been a sophomore, I was already in Pre Calculus and had been planning to take the AP tests for French, Spanish, and Physics.

At home, things were the same drab monotone–and only because Zuri had not disclosed my secret.

Why she chose to strike a deal with me rather than tell mom I didn’t understand then. But now I know that if she had told Mara, I would have felt as threatened as a cornered animal, and who knew what kind of outcome that would lead to? The only chance to keep me pliable, I think, was to let me think I was still in control.

October. The Indian summer left me. Autumn rains came in earnest.

I gave up the struggle one of those gloomy days–and then was so sick I missed school the next day. After that, my money ran out so fast that I considered contacting my father (I quickly squashed that idea, though). Instead, I asked my brother for a loan, then begged mom to give cash as a Christmas gift—and to give it to me in advance.

Please…

 

part 8 of If You Only Knew

This Side of Eternity

I believed in hell.

That is part of why I never did it it–because I was too much of a coward to die and go straight there. It’s not because I didn’t know how to do it; anyone who wants to know something will find it out by a few discreet, hypothetical questions. Or by eavesdropping–if you really can’t bring yourself to ask the ones that know.

One day when I was changing in the girl’s locker rooms after a mile run, I heard Monique and Serena talking. I was surprised because I thought I was the last one there–I always made sure I had the locker room all to myself. I hastened to put my clothes back on, lest I be seen.

“Cold water never works, dummy. It has to be hot. Scalding hot. It will numb you after a while”
“That makes no sense. Shouldn’t it be ice-cold?”
“Nope”

Sometimes I overheard the guys

“…His neck didn’t break. He’s too light. Must have been choking there for a long time.”
“What if he’d used a longer rope, and jumped off a chair or something?”
“I dunno, would have had to drop a good ten feet. I heard of someone they did it like that and their head was ripped off”
“Sick, man!”
“Yeah. What a way to go”

I know.

But it wasn’t entirely hell and cowardice that kept me from actually doing it. Yes, I was afraid of the blood that would spurt from my slit wrists, or the horrible ways that my hanging could go wrong (as if hanging wasn’t already bad enough). But far more than my cowardice–which was great–was the one thought that if I did it I would lose them forever.

I couldn’t imagine being parted for all eternity from the people I most loved–those who’d gone already, and those living.

So in a way, it was love that kept me this side of eternity.

Love!

Why didn’t I see it sooner? I suppose it was because I was convinced that love was nothing but a joke when it came to me.

 

part 2 of If You Only Knew

– – –

If You Only Knew, Part 2
Word Count ~ 300

A Letter to My Church Sisters

Dear Church Sisters:

First of all, thank you for drawing me out of my shell yesterday at church. I wanted to run away instead of talking and listening to you. Why? Because I’ve come to hate small talk that includes questions such as: “How are you?”, “How was your week?”, and “How is work?” Ugh. You have a particular gift of holding down timid people like me and making good use of each encounter; though I wanted to run away you still managed to bombard me your good advice.

The truth is I am doing ok, but it feels like I’m doing badly. My week was very busy, though it felt like I was wasting a bunch of time, and work–well . . . can we please have a conversation that doesn’t involve work? Work is well enough where I left it, two or three weeks ago when I quit. I don’t want to talk about work, I feel nauseous, and apologetic, so let’s please drop it.

Please understand, Sisters, that I am bewildered at life–It’s not at all like I thought it would be. I’d always known myself to be smarter and talented than most. But life is about grit and determination, not just ability. And to get the job you really want is mostly about who you know more than your GPA and the awards you get. The discovery of truth felt like having the ground you stand on suddenly drop out. Furthermore, it’s embarrassing to admit that I don’t have it together, that I am struggling against the feeling of failure in most areas of my life.

It’s come to the point that the place where I could find comfort and refuge–the church–has become a place that I dread going to because I look at so many happy and fulfilled people and I find myself wishing I could be like them. Finally, it’s because there I encounter people like you; people who make me uncomfortable, that persist in drawing me out, and challenge me to embrace the future, and love myself regardless of my circumstances. I hate it. But I realize I have more reasons to love it than to hate it. Because family and people who really care will give you advise, and will deliver that smack in the back of the head to put you back in reality, and tell it like it is–and all in love.

That is why I have to say Thank You. Thank you for caring enough about me. I was annoyed, and I even felt like crying in the restroom after talking to you. But I know you are right–and I know that it was very good advice. I expected no less from a real church family.

I know this phase will soon pass. God willing, I will soon find my place in the world where I will do the most good. And one day my heart will be filled with love and compassion for a young, bewildered youth who is feeling lost and lonely and insignificant. When that day comes, I hope to be wise and caring enough to return the favor–just as you did.

Sincerely,

Paula (on behalf of the Young Adults in your church)