Glasses Off

I’m a stories person, the wider the arc the better; an autobiographical and biographical, fictional and nonfictional girl; a we-just-met-in-the-lobby but I’d-like-to-know-what-happened-when-you-were-thirteen-and-how-that-impacts-you-at-forty-three kind of person.

Once, I left for summer camp with the sound of my mom’s voice ringing in my ear, “Take pictures, sweetie! Have a good time!” When I arrived home, one week later, I couldn’t wait to show her the pictures I’d taken. I just knew she’d love them! She did not. Well, she’d at least appreciate the artistry, right? Wrong. Instead, the look on her face could only be described with this word: bewildered.

“Who are all these people? Why did you take pictures of them?” she asked.

“Because you told me to take pictures while I was at summer camp.”

“Yes, but I meant of you, honey. I don’t want these pictures of strangers.”

“Oh!” I responded, startled and slightly embarrassed. “Why would you want pictures of me though? You already know what I look like. You already know my story. Don’t worry, Mom, I asked for their consent and even interviewed them a little!”

Filling in the now awkward silence, I continued, “So Mom, look at this one. This couple has been together since they were five! How cute are their matching outfits?” I pointed to the next image, “And this girl will be the first in her family to graduate college, and she even hopes to get into medical school someday! Oh, and this sweet couple isn’t actually a couple at all. They’re best friends. But anyone with eyes can see that something else is starting to form! Mom, look at all these stories. Aren’t these pictures worth a thousand words?”

She smiled and shook her head lovingly and laughed, and I smiled too.

So that’s what this book is—a collection of stories about life as I see it. Only now, I’m not a bold fourteen-year-old with a disposable camera and strange journalistic tendencies. I’m grown and growing, and the stories are what I’m learning about myself because that’s the only vantage point I can pull from.

Art is full of classic tales about love and war, ones I could never have written. Although they are some of my favorite kinds of stories, this story is not one of them. This is an underdog story. It’s for the improbable contender, the unrevealed visionary, the dark horse, the unlikely victor. It’s a story about stepping inside a God-given assignment with a noble aim and strong intention.

I hope that you’ll savor it. That something sticks with you as it stuck with me while writing it. That the experience of reading this book will be a little like fine dining. It represents hours of my labor, creativity, and false starts. Years of experimentation and funding and trial and error. Market research and my name on the front door, for better or for worse. A decade of work delivered to the table. You’ll devour it with a glass of water—or a glass of red if that’s your thing. And if you enjoy the experience enough, you’ll share it with a loved one or leave a good review, recommend it to a friend, and sometimes sneak back for seconds. I hope the tastes of my words linger.

There are some people this book is not for. It is not for the perfectly decisive person, who has everything figured out. It’s for the person who sometimes feels puzzled but remains hopeful, hungry for answers. I hope if I share some of my scribbles with you, you’ll feel them intensely in your gut, and you’ll have the permission, then, to rewrite your stories with God in the center, stabilizing your weaving and reweaving going forward. I wrote this book not to give you those answers but to figure them out for myself. It proved itself to me as a worthy endeavor because I grew as my love for God grew.

My future is no longer hinged on life’s frailties. And through it all, I found her, the one I’d lost a long time ago. And I challenged her to stretch past herself into the person who was no longer waiting to become someone else. I found my purpose, and it’s brought me here, arrestingly large on the cover because I’m hoping to interrupt your inner monologue too. To share a story, to create a sacred space in which you find your calling, and to help you see a little more clearly.