Chapter 11:11

 I never want to argue with God. I try sometimes and never win. So I need to lay this topic to rest. This morning during my coffee with God, I began crying, picked up my journal, and wrote the following:  Dear God,  I never now know how to begin when I talk to you because asking about your ay doesn't really work, and created me with a disdain for small talk anyway.  The past few months left me angry and confused and questioning everything I thought I knew. Events that broke me so hard. Events that passed through your hands. That was the most confusing part of it all. But I see now, these things weren't sent to destroy me. You weren't angry with me or trying to punish me. You didn't let these things happen to chuckle behind glass while I wrestled and struggled with a God who didn't live up to my expectations. You let me kick and scream and hurl accusations at you because you're not afraid of my rawest form. You formed me in the secret place of my mother's wom...

(Am I furiously typing instead of tackling my calculous quiz? Absolutely I am. I will regret this later.)  When I was 4 or 5 years old, I remember making a playhouse house under a massive bushy cedar. I climbed as high as Mother would allow into the lilac tree and picked as many clusters of those delightful flowers as I possibly could. I used leaves from the weeping willow tree to make soup for my kittens. We moved around a lot in my growing-up years, but one thing that never changed was my attachment to the trees. During a particularly difficult season of life when I was 12, I was planning to run away from home. But I didn't know where I would go until I remembered a certain tree at the edge of the graveyard behind our house that I had hidden in before and decided that was my Hiding Place. I fell asleep then, planning to climb out of my bedroom window at first light, but after a night of sleep, I decided I'd try one more day at home, and never actually ran away. Most of my tee...