Where I am...

The work of writing a novel does not seem quite so important. I haven't edited any part of it since I returned from my second trip. I do not now have a timetable for submitting all or part of any of my stories for publication.

I still have story ideas but they are not my first priority anymore.

I am at the same desk where I typed facts from the news on September 11th, 2001. The computer is different, though. I am also different.

The first time I went to Louisiana, I deliberately held back my expectations. I deliberately chose not to expect to be changed in any way--the worst case scenario. I did not want to disappoint myself if I backslid, showed unchristlike anger, swore, or behaved in a way that didn't reflect God. I did not expect that any experience short of dying would make me a better person, because I had tried to be that person by myself, and I had never succeeded.

All I did was clean, remove furniture, remove carpeting, and tear out drywall. I hauled loads in wheelbarrows, hung out with an energetic crowd of teens for four days in Louisiana, and then came home.

As I looked back on the devastation, and as I could see less and less of it on the way home, I prayed: "Please, God, don't let me go back to the way I was before." I haven't felt the same since then. Periodically, as a reminder, I repeat that prayer. Sometimes I even cry as I think it.

This is the true welcome to Inverted Life, when you willingly accept a change in who you are, even if it means sacrificing part of who you were.

"If any man would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." (Matthew 16:24)