Following Austen

Announcing... Jane Austen 2009 Calendar

2008-12-02T20:30:00.002-05:00

Dear readers -- hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I'm beginning to feel well enough to enter the world of blogging again (though it has required a strict fish-and-vegetables diet... more on that soon). I'm thrilled to announce...

Jane Austen's England 2009 Calendar

Featuring pictures of the places Jane lived, loved and wrote about, including Steventon, Chawton, Box Hill, Bath, Lyme, Winchester -- and more!

Also includes dates from Jane's life -- the writing and publishing of each of the books, dancing with Tom Lefroy, the moves to Bath and Chawton ... and much more!

More info and preview here.

www.followingausten.com

2007-09-07T15:28:00.001-05:00

Okay, I've got the NEW address set up at www.followingausten.com, so it's much easier to find (this is the new site on Typepad).

There's lots going on over there -- an endorsement from Karen Joy Fowler and Emma Campbell Webster, more info about Becoming Jane, a new article about Our Year-Long Romance with Austen, and more of the review from Jane Austen's World. I've added categories as well so everything's easier to find.

Bookmark it or subscribe to the feed. See you there!

A new place

2007-08-12T16:01:00.000-05:00

I have just moved this blog over to Typepad, because I was having trouble keeping up blogs on two different systems.

The new URL is:

http://janeaustenquotes.typepad.com/followingausten (I'm working on making that much simpler -- stay tuned.)

The feed is still:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/FollowingAusten

Come visit me there!

An endorsement

2007-08-02T10:21:00.000-05:00

I just got this endorsement from author Tamara Leigh, who I had the privilege of hanging out with at CBA in Atlanta. I'm honored!

"With wit, charm, and rare honesty--of which I have to believe Jane Austen would have thoroughly approved--Lori Smith weaves her personal life experiences throughout her journey into the life that was Jane's. Infused with faith, romance, loss, and a search for self, A Walk With Jane Austen makes for that rare book which keeps popping into one's thoughts and beckoning one back."

Tamara Leigh
Author of Perfecting Kate and Splitting Harriet

If you're looking for good chick lit, check out Tamara's books. Mine is available for pre-order and will be released October 16. (Forgive me if I've said that a hundred times!)

Fact and Fiction in Becoming Jane

2007-08-02T09:02:00.000-05:00

For Carolyn and her friends -- and anyone else who is wondering -- just wanted to give you a brief roundup of fact vs. fiction in Becoming Jane.

Fact: Jane did fall in love with Tom Lefroy when she was twenty. More info here.
Fiction: Tom was a good guy, not a lout (Jane described him as "gentlemanlike" and others describe him as being quiet and shy), and it's unlikely they saw each other after he left Hampshire the first time.

Fact: Henry, one of Jane's six brothers, and her favorite, was handsome and charming and full of energy (and tall). He flirted with their cousin Eliza (who was ten years older) and eventually married her. After she died, he became a clergyman and took over the parish at Steventon where Jane grew up.
Fiction: Henry was not a lout either -- adventurous, yes; drunken partying with women of ill repute, no.

Fact: Jane's cousin Eliza spent a number of years in France, married a Frenchman who was guillotined, and enjoyed her ability to flirt.
Fiction: She was first and foremost English, though she could speak French like a native, and if she liked to flirt, well, that's different than how she's portrayed in the movie. She would have been compelling and lively, but her actions here stretch credibility.

Fact: Anne Lefroy was Tom's aunt and Jane's dear friend.
Fiction: In the movie Anne barely says two words. She was incredibly intelligent and kind and a mentor to Jane. She is the one who stepped in and sent Tom home when she saw they were getting too attached, which was to say the least a bit difficult, but she and Jane had an incredibly close relationship.

Fact: The gentlemen pursuers are not entirely fictional here -- there was an awkward clergyman (Samuel Blackall) who liked Jane and may have been a model for Mr. Collins. And there was a wonderful kind (and rich) if somewhat awkward young man in the neighborhood -- Harris Bigg-Wither -- who proposed one night. Jane accepted then changed her mind overnight and left the house in disgrace. There was also a John Warren, a former pupil of Mr. Austen's, that some thought was in love with Jane, but it seems they were just good friends.
Fiction: So, Mr. Wisley in the movie -- and his aunt Lady Gresham -- are fictional.

Fact: Jane's second oldest brother, George, was mentally disabled in some way and had fits. It's possible he was deaf and dumb.
Fiction: He lived with the Austen family for a while, but was eventually sent away to another village to be cared for by a family who also took care of Mrs. Austen's brother, who had similar difficulties. There is a reference to Jane talking with her fingers, so perhaps she did communicate with him that way.

Fact: Cassandra's fiance, Tom Fowle, did die in the West Indies. All of that was unfortunately true. They had been engaged almost five years, and were only waiting to have enough money to marry. Long engagements were very common when money was an issue.

Fact: Jane and Tom did banter about Tom Jones. A bit risque, perhaps, but Jane would have enjoyed the joke. And she never liked Fielding as much as Richardson, precisely because of the way they handled questions of morality.

Fact: Finances were tight in the Austen household.
Fiction: By the time Jane was grown up, while things were always stretched a bit it seems, the family was not in dire straights, and Jane's brother Edward had been adopted by a wealthy family (a long story) which gave them all some sense of security.

Fiction: George and Cassandra Austen, Jane's parents, seem to have married for love and loved each other deeply. So, the movie's portrayal is a bit harsh. Once, when the boys were small, Cassandra went to help her sister in childbirth, and George wrote to his sister-in-law, “I don’t much like this lonely kind of Life,” and when he talked about the family possibly paying a visit, he said, “I say we, for I certainly shall not let my Wife come alone, & I dare say she will not leave her children behind her.” You can just see the country rector, who did not marry until he was almost thirty-three, in his rather plain small house, missing his dear wife. George had a wonderful disposition, described as “bright and hopeful.” Cassandra, who loved to write small, witty poems, seems to have been full of life.

More info on Becoming Jane here, including reviews and quotes from Jane's letters about Tom.

Carolyn McCulley

2007-08-02T08:56:00.000-05:00

Fellow writer Carolyn McCulley and I have emailed back and forth over the years, but we've never met in person, so it was a gift to walk into a huge crowded theater and just happen to sit next to her and her group of friends. Check out her blog and her thoughts on Becoming Jane.

First Impressions

2007-08-02T08:15:00.001-05:00

I got to see a screening of Becoming Jane last night, and came home with very mixed emotions about it. I started out hopeful, thinking it might be a good, fun movie even if it wasn't quite Jane's life. And by the end, it had nearly won me over. But for most of the intervening hour and ten minutes, I was just uncomfortable. There was so much that didn't seem right either for Jane or for that era.

The movie feels to me like a blatant marketing attempt to get all those Jane Austen fans back into the theatre. They've taken elements of her stories--Mrs. Austen was more Mrs. Bennet than anything else, and Tom Lefroy is part Darcy (the bad part) and part Willoughby, and they've taken lines from the movies -- movies! -- which were not ever in the books to begin with. And they took much of the feel of the movie from the 2005 Focus Features Pride & Prejudice -- the one with Keira Knightley -- so there are plenty of barn animals.

Most of it just simply didn't ring true. Jane would never, ever have fallen for a guy like that. She valued character too much. She would never have run off with anyone. And as smart as they tried to make her, she was smarter than that. And was surrounded by a loving, intelligent family. Her father is one of my favorite characters in her life, but I really didn't like the portrayal of him. I liked Anna Maxwell Martin's Cassandra and I thought Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy did a good job with the script they were given ... I just really didn't like the script. (sigh.)

I would love to see a movie that more accurately tried to capture Jane's life. Perhaps the Miss Austen Regrets biopic that's coming from Masterpiece Theatre will be better. There are so many interesting stories in her life, it's a shame to make things up. But it takes an eye that can focus on the small things Jane wrote about, and make them compelling the way she did.

Part 1 review

2007-07-30T11:04:00.000-05:00

Ms. Place at Jane Austen's World has posted more of her review. Made me giddy!

"A Walk With Jane Austen is a lovely book, full of unexpected insights and revelations. Lori Smith's revealing and personal account is a pure joy to read. As a single, independent and talented woman she is in want of a man, but will not compromise her principles or her quest to experience romantic love in order to simply be with one. Sound familiar?"

50: The truth about Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy

2007-07-27T14:14:00.005-05:00

Anne Hathaway will be on David Letterman tonight talking about Becoming Jane. And according to my Tivo, she will be on Good Morning America and Live with Regis and Kelly on Wednesday Aug. 1, and on Late Night with Conan O'Brien on Friday Aug. 3. The movie opens nationwide on the 10th. I have a pass to a screening next week, so I'll let you know what my thoughts are when I see it. It looks lovely, just not exactly Jane's story.

Before all the hubbub starts, here's a primer on what happened between Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy. Forgive the long post -- wanted to get this all in one. (You can also see excerpts from Jane's letters to her sister about Tom here.)

50: Jane and Tom

Jane Austen essentially created the chick lit genre. We all know the formula—girl meets guy, girl falls in love with guy, guy breaks her heart, girl meets nicer, better-looking guy with more money and they live happily ever after. Obstacles abound in Austen’s stories—lack of money on the part of the otherwise lovely heroine, meddling family members who pull lovers apart because they disapprove the match—but these things are always overcome by the abundant worth of two good people who truly love each other.

The love stories in Austen’s own life echo these themes, but without the “happily ever after” ending.

Jane’s first love, at twenty, was Tom Lefroy. He was a law student from Ireland, the nephew of her dear friend Anne’s husband, and Anne may have introduced them. We know little about the relationship, really. Much of what we know of Jane’s life is from her letters, but her sister Cassandra burned many and mutilated more before passing them on to nieces and nephews late in her life. Perhaps Cassandra cut out the juiciest bits, or, as Austen expert Deirdre Le Faye suggests, the parts that could have offended one family member or other. Either way, there are gaps.

Jane and Tom spent some time together over the course of a few weeks, over Christmas and New Year's. He was fairly serious, quiet and very good—maybe a balance for Jane’s energetic humor. They bantered over Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, and after a ball, Jane wrote jokingly to Cassandra of “everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together.” She writes about how Tom is given a hard time in the Lefroy household for the attachment, so that when she pays a visit he manages to hide. But he would pay her another visit, as was the custom, to thank her for partnering him at the ball, and the only fault she could really find with him was that his morning coat was “a great deal too light.”

There is much debate these days about just how in love Jane was with Tom, and how much this relationship influenced her writing. Some say it was just a flirtation—clearly, in Jane’s letters, she is being sarcastic, they say. To me she writes like there is some depth to her feelings, in spite of trying to laugh them off. “I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening,” she writes of their last meeting. “I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white coat.” She sounds a little bit like my friends and I as well, telling stories of a romance that fell into the middle of a life that was largely without romantic interest, making much of a little thing. Yet, it’s easy to imagine her being teasing and sharp with Tom.

Tom was from a good family but not wealthy. His father had been in the army. He was the oldest son, but it was a large family, eleven children with five daughters ahead of him, and he was made to feel that the future of the family was on his shoulders. He was expected to do well, to do much. Though the attachment seems to have been mutual, Anne and her husband stepped in and quickly sent Tom home. The family history is that Anne Lefroy was forever frustrated with Tom over this, his leading Jane on when he knew there was no chance he could propose.

Tom eventually married someone with an appropriately large fortune, had seven children, and went on to become Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. He was no Darcy—not heir to great estates or wealth—but clearly his family had expectations Jane did not meet. If Jane wrote about family interference, she learned it firsthand. Tom may have adored her and she him but she hadn’t enough money to qualify. Most likely Jane never saw him again.

When it ended, Jane wrote to Cassandra: “At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, & when you receive this it will be over—My tears flow as I write, at the melancholy idea.” She was joking, of course. How deeply she felt the joke we will never really know. But her heart had been engaged for likely the first time.

No doubt this relationship and her repartee with Tom fueled her writing. Whether it was "her greatest inspiration" as the trailers for Becoming Jane claim, well, that's debatable. But I'm sure it provided as spark.

Excerpted from my book, A Walk with Jane Austen. Read more at www.followingausten.com or read the first chapter online.

Check out the new Jane Austen's England Calendar for 2009! Featuring pictures of the places Jane lived, loved and wrote about, including Steventon, Chawton, Box Hill, Bath, Lyme, Winchester.

Also includes dates from Jane's life -- the writing and publishing of each of the books, dancing with Tom Lefroy, the moves to Bath and Chawton ... and much more!

Sources:
Jane Austen's Letters (ed. Deirdre Le Faye)
Jane Austen: A Family Record (Deirdre Le Faye)
Jane Austen: A Life (Claire Tomalin)

Picture is of Ashe House, Anne Lefroy's home.

Austen stationery

2007-07-27T14:11:00.001-05:00

Bonnie sent me a link to a wonderful site, Small Meadows Press, with gorgeous stationery and note cards and business cards, with literary themes. It's lovely.

A Walk with JA -- Reading Group Tour

2007-07-24T18:11:00.000-05:00

A comment from Bonnie on the daily quote blog got me thinking. If you're part of a reading group and planning to read A Walk with Jane Austen when it comes out, I would love to join your group for a discussion of the book. Here's what I'm thinking:

What: Reading Group Tour

When: November and December, 2007

Times Available: 7:00 pm - 11:00 pm EST

Details: I would love to chat with your group about A Walk with JA. I would spend up to thirty minutes with each group by phone. You would need to have a phone with speakerphone capability (which could be a cell phone). We can talk through some of the Reading Group questions in the back of the book, or you can send me questions ahead of time, or we can just chat about anything Austen-related.

If you'd like to sign your group up for this, respond to this post or email me at austenquotes AT gmail DOT com.

Or if you're in a reading group and ideas for how to make this work best, let me know!

Really look forward to chatting with you.

Review at Jane Austen's World

2007-07-18T17:37:00.000-05:00

Ms. Place at Jane Austen's World (janites on the james) has started a sweet chapter-by-chapter review of Walk with JA:

During a critical juncture in Lori's life when she faced a personal crisis, she chose to do what many of us yearn to do but few actually dare, which is to leave everything behind and embark on a life altering journey. Lori's account about her search for Jane is written on several levels, as a memoir and personal journey of faith and discovery, as a search for the places where Jane Austen lived and trod, as a straightforward history of Jane's life, and as a way to deepen her understanding of the author. . . .

Lori's journey is deeply personal, but one she willingly shares with her readers.

The Year of Jane Austen

2007-07-18T16:53:00.000-05:00

As you may know, there's a TON of Jane Austen stuff going on this year. (Whoo-hoo! I'm hoping this will be a Good Thing...)

Here's a quick roundup:

Becoming Jane: a big Hollywood movie on Jane's life, opening August 3 -- stars Anne Hathaway

The Jane Austen Book Club: based on Karen Joy Fowler's novel, opens September 21

Masterpiece Theatre will air the Complete Jane Austen Season from January through March 2008, including 4 new adaptations plus a biopic called "Miss Austen Regrets"

There are tons of new books coming out, including...

The Jane Austen Handbook, by Margaret Sullivan (Mags is the much-loved editor of AustenBlog -- be sure to check it out for more Austen news.)

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, by Laurie Viera Rigler (just got a review copy of this in the mail)

And, of course, by yours truly...

Forgive the shameless self-promotion, but I believe A Walk with Jane Austen is unique in the realm of Austen literature for its personal take on the author's life -- it's one ardent fan talking about her life story and reflecting on what her writing has meant and why we still love her so much, examining Austen themes like love, marriage, singleness, and independence, through the lens of both her life and my own, and looking at the little-discussed topic of her faith.

So prepare for a very good and very full year!

I'm alive!

2007-07-17T15:24:00.000-05:00

If you've been reading the Jane Austen quote blog, you know that already, but after not posting here for six-plus months, I thought perhaps I should clarify that.

The book is completely done other than proofreading (whoo-hoo, whoo-hoo!) and review copies have already gone out, so we should start seeing some reviews in the next month or so. I can't wait!

The title has changed once more (but this is really it): A Walk with Jane Austen: A Journey into Adventure, Love and Faith. And -- as you may already know -- it's available for pre-order on Amazon. It's official release date is October 16.

I'm still struggling with the Lyme disease, but beginning to feel better. I'm very thankful for that. The doctors think it could be as much as another three years on treatment to get it to go into remission. I'm continuing to pray for complete healing, and at the same time trying to mentally and emotionally accept what may be a long-term energy deficiency.

It's very nice to be back!

Ella and the new year

2007-01-11T16:41:00.000-05:00

Thanks for all the comments and encouraging words. And now that we are into double digits, allow me to wish everyone a hearty new year. In the spirit of Mr. John Knightley, here's wishing that your holidays allowed you some peaceful time by your very own fire, with bad weather outside and family within. (Or, if you are as lucky as my friend Catherine, some time sitting in the 80-degree Florida sun.)

I am planning to keep up this blog in addition to the new quote blog. Yesterday's quote, by the way, if quite snarky, is one of my favorites.

I'm planning to post additional bits of the book here. I'm only afraid that by the time it comes out you will have read everything good in it, so I have to make you promise now to buy it anyway. Jane said something once (jokingly, of course) about all of her friends and family feeling obligated to buy one of her new books, and how she was very glad that they did feel obligated, even if they disliked it or never read it. I have to agree. The money is really all that matters to me, and I have friends enough to earn--oh, I don't know, a couple hundred dollars, at least.

I have a cover, which is absolutely gorgeous, and now I am only afraid (because I am always afraid of this, so bear with me) that the writing will not live up to the cover's promise. I think I'm not allowed to post it yet, because I don't know if it's been officially approved, and it may be a while before I can.

Several people have asked, here or in person, about an update on the Lyme disease. It's incredibly disheartening. I've had good days--not healthy, but better--followed by days or weeks of fatigue and insomnia and Lyme-induced haze, and nausea from all the medicine. Life is so far from normal. The latest tests show that my immune system is not rallying to fight the illness, so we are trying a new antibiotic, and--fingers crossed--there have been no bad reactions yet.

I wasn't ready for a new year, simply because hope is very short, almost nonexistent at the moment. I did not want a new year with these conditions, not knowing how long this will last or if all of 2007 will be under this very dark cloud. But I got an iPod for Christmas, and as I was recklessly downloading music I came across a collection of Ella Fitzgerald songs and decided that I could allow myself to buy it. And there she was singing Night and Day and Funny Valentine and Blue Skies and Over the Rainbow, and there was this tiny timbre of hope in my heart, a gift from God in the voice of Ella Fitzgerald.

Please continue to pray. Hope to be back here soon.

A daily dose of Jane

2006-12-19T15:29:00.000-05:00

I have started a new blog so you can get your daily JA fix. Enjoy!

It's all in a name...

2006-12-15T16:17:00.000-05:00

Drumroll please: As you'll notice on the masthead above, we have an official title for the book. It will be... A Walk with Jane: Following Austen, Finding Grace. I'm very pleased. My thanks to the WaterBrook editorial team!

You go girl!

2006-12-15T16:12:00.000-05:00

Sarah Hazel, whom I met through this blog, had her first gallery show in November, and I have been meaning to post about it since then. Go, Sarah! Congrats!

Finding Godmersham (part 3: the best cabbie in the world)

2006-12-15T15:53:00.000-05:00

At that point, the absolute best thing that could have happened, happened. A cabbie went by in one direction, saw my pitiful thumb sticking out, and turned around and came back a few minutes later. Cue the trumpet voluntary. God saved me. At least, that is what it felt like.

Brian is officially The Best Cabbie in the World. “You’re awfully wet,” he said. He drove me to Godmersham, first to the church and then to the big house, turned off his meter and sat and waited for me twenty minutes while I walked through the fields to see the house (and when I got back in the cab, “You’re still awfully wet.”), then drove me all the way back to Canterbury. He wasn’t creepy at all, which a girl might worry about in that situation. He had short blond hair that might have been going the tiniest bit white, bright blue eyes and a solid build. He was wearing a nice shirt and dark pants, nothing about him was messy. We had a little bond going, Brian and I. When he found out about the Austen connection, he wanted to take me out to Goodnestone as well (which was the Bridges’ home, Edward’s in-laws), but I couldn’t afford another adventure. As it was, I paid him 30 pounds, and now it seems like such a bargain. It felt wrong somehow to just say goodbye to him there in the tourist district of Canterbury, feeling like he had saved my life. (Of course, it only took about five minutes to get to Godmersham once I got in the cab, but I don’t think I could have gone further, and I never could have walked back.)

Godmersham was one of the loveliest spots I’ve ever seen. It stopped raining, though the sky was still heavily gray. You can’t get into the house (at least, I couldn’t find contact info for anyone), which is now a professional school of some kind. The walking path leads through the sheep pasture, next to the cows, and up a hill into a cornfield so you can get a better perspective on the whole layout. None of my pictures do it justice. It’s simple and grand, gorgeous red brick, classical lines with two rows of windows and two wings on either end, and maybe more in the back. The house sits in the valley of the Stour (though I was in such a hurry I couldn’t figure out where the river was in relation to the house), broad hills rising behind and in front of it. When Jane came to visit, they made a point of hiking (or walking, as they called it) every afternoon. I wish I had hours to explore.

Jane and Cassandra spent a great deal of time there, usually separately, one being called from time to time to help with household duties after the birth of the latest child. There were eleven children before Elizabeth died just after the youngest was born. Cassandra seems to have been Elizabeth’s favorite. No doubt Cassandra was more compliant, Jane’s wit more disconcerting. Jane's niece Anna said, “A little talent went a long way . . . & much must have gone a long way too far." And Jane, who loved to laugh at everyone, herself included, no doubt found material enough at Godmersham.

At 5:09 P.M. in Faversham, on the train back, the sun came out. My feet were still soaked.

here's one more...

2006-12-07T19:36:00.000-05:00

I love this one!

head shots

2006-12-07T19:29:00.000-05:00

I got my new portrait done for the book. I'm thrilled with the way they turned out! Generally speaking, I hate pictures.

These were done by J. Aaron Trotman in Nags Head, NC, and I can't recommend him highly enough. He did family pictures for us as well, on the deck of my parents' house. Fun!

Ack!

2006-12-07T19:10:00.000-05:00

I had no intention of waiting a month to post again. First there was a horrible I-was-only-capable-of-sitting-on-the-couch-and-moaning cold. Then there was the manuscript to finish. And then Thanksgiving, which plumb wore me out.

I'm thrilled the manuscript is in. I don't think I've been able to properly celebrate, but the morning I turned it in I was in North Carolina with my parents, at the beach. We got doughnuts from The Orange Blossom in Buxton, which are the best in all of creation. They make me ridiculously happy. And then I sat on the beach for an hour in the sun, just thinking about the journey of this book. A year ago I only had a draft proposal, and today--in spite of all the sickness and darkness of this year--I have a manuscript. I'm very thankful.

I have declared December the month of bubbly juice (because I am still forbidden real bubbly ) and flowers. So far, I have tried apple, cranberry and blueberry. I'm looking for pear. And Trader Joe's may have pomegranate.

48: Finding Godmersham (part 2 - hitchhike like a librarian)

2006-12-07T18:53:00.000-05:00

At 1:40 I caught the train to Chilham. By 2:40, I was drenched, my hair soaked, my pants wet 4 inches deep, walking on a narrow slippery shoulder of an incredibly busy A road in the middle of the Kent countryside. I didn’t know that A roads were the main routes, until Margaret told me just a few minutes ago.

One of my most frequent prayers of late is that I will just not be an idiot. And I don’t mean the socially awkward, always saying the wrong things at the wrong time kind of idiot, though perhaps I should pray for that more as I have some talent in that area. I mean, the kind of proud ridiculous idiot who thinks highest of themselves and as a result whose life adds up to very little in the end. But this was idiocy of a whole other kind. About fifteen minutes into the experience, I knew that this was one of the dumbest things I had ever done, and begged God to please do something to get me off the side of the road, even though I often question His direct involvement in my life as a result of prayer. Today I believed.

It made sense when I started out. Chilham was the smallest train station I had seen yet. There were no cabs, not even a shack, no phone numbers posted on a sign anywhere. Everyone who got off the train with me disappeared. I started to walk in what seemed like the direction of town. I passed a tea shop and thought perhaps I shoud stop there to call a cab, but just beyond it was a signpost that said Godmersham. I remembered that Chilham was mentioned in the book I had, the one that describes all the Austen hikes. I looked it up there at the side of the road and found it was only two or three miles, but the writer recommended a back way through fields and I couldn’t figure that out. Better to stick to the road. It had stopped raining, although it was spitting a little. There was a marked walking path beside the road, even, so I set out. What is two or three miles on a walking path by a country road in spitting rain to reach a village no one has ever heard of? I could hear Marianne saying, It’s not going to rain. And anyway, it’s nothing I mind at all.

The walking trail quickly veered off to the left and I decided to follow the road instead. It started to rain again, harder, until it was raining so hard it seemed to be coming straight through my Goretex jacket, under which I was sweating from the exertion. I tried to keep my hood up to keep my head dry, but it cuts off my vision and eventually it just annoyed me so I took it down and let my head get soaked. The shoulder was gradually disappearing.

Fifteen minutes in, I knew it was a mistake. But I thought, how much further can it be? Fifteen more minutes, and the shoulder had completely disappeared so that I was walking in the road and jumping up on the bank between trees when I heard cars coming. Like a horrible sitcom every car that went by splashed me with water. The road curved so much and the cars were going so fast, I thought how easy it would be for a car to whip around a corner and hit me dead on. I was officially terrified. But now I was 30 minutes into the walk, and I know I can easily walk a mile in 15 minutes, so I thought it really couldn’t be that much further.

I slipped on the grass and my hand landed on nettles of some kind. All I could think was, what if I had slipped into the road? I passed a simple, expensive-looking house with handcrafted bronze gates. Feeling incredibly foolish, I rang the intercom, but the phone on the other end just rang and rang and no one picked up.

So when I made it to a little clearing, I did the only thing I could think of: I stuck out my thumb. Only I don’t know how to hitchhike the cool way, so I looked like a soaked crazy woman now having an incredibly bad hair day sticking out my thumb in the manner of a librarian and occasionally trying to wave cars down. No one stopped.

to be continued...

Shhh...

2006-12-07T18:52:00.000-05:00

The manuscript is turned in! Whoo-hoo!

A review of my first book

2006-11-06T14:29:00.000-05:00

Got an email recently from Jack Zavada who posted a really nice review of my first book, The Single Truth, on his web site.

Also, I heard through the grapevine that they'll be selling Single Truth at Urbana this year. Evidently, one of the sessions will be on being a single missionary, and they're recommending it. Very cool! Look for it if you happen to be there.

47: Finding Godmersham (part 1)

2006-11-03T18:26:00.000-05:00

Here is another little bit from the book, one of my favorite experiences. (Or at least, one of my favorite stories to tell from the trip.) You can tell that I have made some changes. I've put everything in present tense, and am writing it in the form of a journal. Enjoy!

For those who don't know, Godmersham was Jane's brother Edward's grand house in Kent. He's the brother who was adopted by wealthy relatives and inherited their estates. Godmersham is very close to Canterbury.

Sunday, July 25, 6:43 P.M.
on the couch at Margaret’s

Margaret has made me promise never to hitchhike again. She laughed at me, of course (which I had no problem with, because I was laughing at myself anyway), and has refused my help with dinner, sitting me on the couch with tea and biscuits while she makes quiche. I will miss her tomorrow when I leave. The view of Godmersham from the fields was worth everything.

It’s been an ugly day—both for me and the weather. I wore my green cropped sweatpants and dark red tank, which would have been okay, except that I had to wear my hiking shoes with it, which threw the whole outfit off, and then it was so cold I had to put on my red fleece, which clashed with everything, and it was raining off and on so I kept putting on and taking off my rain jacket, which clashed with the fleece, and it was a bad hair day on top of everything. I had planned to try Winchester today, thinking it would be simpler, but they were doing work on the tracks in that direction this morning. Instead, Margaret drove me to the Bromley station and I was able to get a train directly to Canterbury, which was so much easier than I imagined it would be. (She made a point of coming in with me to make sure I would be able to make it through the gate, although I knew it wouldn’t be a problem.)

The town center is small, the streets narrow. The sky was gray and spitting wet. I found my way from the train station to the Cathedral without a map. It’s hidden behind a stone wall right in the center of town. I mean, as if you could hide a cathedral, but it seemed a little strange to me that it was walled in.

I made it there a little after 11, just after the morning service had started. To me it felt oppressive and lifeless—maybe because it was so gray and cold. Maybe because the sermon was rubbish, a woman going on about some cartoon character I’d never heard of, but even I could tell her analogies were weak and overall she seemed to lack strength and conviction. I shouldn’t judge so quickly, but that was my impression. They were charging everyone 6 pounds to get in unless you were going to the service, and then you were supposed to pay more for a pass if you wanted to take pictures. I didn’t pay anything, and I didn’t give them a donation because I thought what they were doing was so obnoxious and so against the spirit of Christianity. I realized regretfully as I sat there in the folding chairs at the back that this is officially the seat of the Anglican church, my church. Blech.

By 1:00 I was choking on a dry ham omelet in a great little café above the tourist center, and at 1:40 I caught the train to Chilham from the West train station on the other side of town. The lady at the tourist center had never heard of Godmersham. Very bad beginning, I thought. Then when she did look up the bus schedule, she said the buses didn’t run on Sunday, so I should take the train to Chilham and get a cab from there, which would be much cheaper. (Lesson: ALWAYS ask the tourist office for the number of a local cab company.)

I sat there drinking my watered-down instant decaf, literally choking on my dry ham omelet because I was trying to eat it so fast, feeling like an ugly, conspicuous, backpack-toting tourist. I felt like I couldn’t do anything right, and had far too many un-chic accoutrements. I wondered if I should even try to find Godmersham, what kind of challenges I would find, if it would even be worth the effort. So I made a conscious decision to choose adventure. Hang it all, I thought. So much goodness has met me so far on the trip, who knows what I’ll find today? And that is when the fun began.

to be continued...

Jane's pic

2006-11-03T18:19:00.000-05:00

I wanted to post this with my riff on beauty, but the National Portrait Gallery in London makes you fill out a form and pay some kind of fee to use their images, so here it is.

Where I have been, and various thoughts on life, health insurance and the life of the self employed

2006-11-03T17:19:00.000-05:00

Forgive the long absence. I guess they've been fairly regular of late. I have been just sort of keeping my head above water, writing taking precedence over everything else--blogging, unfortunately, included. The good news is, that all these little bits of writing are forming themselves into something like a book. (I hesitate to say even that for fear of jinxing it.)

So, where have I been? Well, right now, I am sitting in Greenberry's, my favorite coffee shop, drinking tea and eating chocolate McVities. I come here to get out of the house and be around people. What cracks me up is that all these self-employed creative types come here for the same reason. And then we all sit here with our Macs (approximately 87% of the people who come to Greenberry's use Macs) and talk to no one. The other day one of the other regulars nodded in my direction and I felt amazed to have sort of connected with someone.

This week I have been fighting headaches on every front. My health insurance company sent me the bill for the first quarter of my new plan. It is going to be roughly equivalent to five or six additional mortgage payments every year, and I just refuse to think about it. It would be one thing if I felt like I was getting something for my money, but I'm feeling a bit taken advantage of. Shopping for health insurance ranks somewhere between going to the dentist and being savagely attacked. Using your health insurance is not that much more fun.

The biggest headache this week has been trying to get my insurance company to pay for claims they have had for more than 6 months. I don't think you'll want to read about this, but I'm going to tell you anyway because I have to tell someone, and my mom has already heard the sob story. The two labs total nearly $400. I sent the first one in sometime in March or April. They lost it. I sent it in again, along with the second receipt. They failed to process both of them this time. When I called to follow up, after waiting weeks to hear from them, they said they had to mail them to California since the lab was in California, and I had to give Blue Cross California 30 days to process it. That was the first of September. Still nothing. (Sheesh. I want to stick hot pokers in my eyes just typing this out.) I finally found someone this week who said she would help me, but when I called her back to follow up she said, "Oh, I'm sorry, your plan has changed so I don't have authority and someone else has to approve this." ARGH! Argh, argh, argh. Shoot me now. Seriously. Does it all have to be this painful? What we need is for some brilliant entrepreneur out there to start the Southwest Airlines version of health insurance. Cheap, no thrills, excellent service, clear expectations.

Today I am sending in roughly $1100 more in claims. I think I'll be lucky if I see any of that money again. It all makes me think how easy it would be, even today, even in America, to just slip through the cracks and end up in a bad situation. It just takes one illness, which is completely out of your control, and then maybe you can't work, and if you didn't have a support system, it would be really hard to figure out how to get help. It would be too easy to just give up. I'm lucky. No one is going to let me starve, and I still have a little income (though I don't recommend writing for those who want to be financially secure).

Oh, and I got in an accident on Saturday. I was driving home from having brunch with my friends Bev and Jordan. I was stopped at a light, looking for my phone or something. In my peripheral vision, I saw the minivan in front of me start to move and I stepped on the gas. Only, they weren't really going and the light was still red, so I smacked into their bumper. Very little damage, none to my car at all. The best kind of accident, right? So I thought. Then the lady I hit, who had been out walking around and talking to me, decided that she wanted to call an ambulance. They STRAPPED HER TO A BOARD. Sheesh! What was she thinking? So because she did that, her two preteen girls decided they had to have an ambulance, too. (BTW, I love that she just left them in the car while the medics were attending her. Excellent maternal instincts!) Now they are claiming medical expenses and saying they need continued treatment. My insurance company says they may have to settle.

On a brighter note, I got to go to the Cox Farms Fall Festival with my parents and my niece, Grace. I think that was the highlight of my fall! It's open one more weekend--big slides and free pumpkins included. If you're here in northern Virginia, take your little ones.

46: On beauty (or, being a fat little skinny girl)

2006-10-16T12:35:00.000-05:00

I promised this post last week, then my grandmother passed away and this didn't seem very important. So, here it is. (And, yes, I know I'm a little crazy. Aren't we all sometimes?)

Jane was not beautiful. I think this is one of the reasons I like her, or the idea of her. Actually, really, we don’t know what she looked like. The only likeness we have is this little drawing her sister did, that looks like just the work of an afternoon and that no one thought looked especially like her at the time. The proportions seem off—the shoulders slope, the eyes and mouth and shape of the head and neck are not quite right—yet nearly every image we have of her has been adapted somehow from this. They probably never imagined it would make it outside their little family circle. And now it sits in a little case in the National Portrait Gallery in London, the light going off and on from time to time to protect it.

Jane’s niece, Caroline said in her brief memoir of her aunt:

“Her’s was the first face that I can remember thinking pretty, not that I used that word to myself, but I know I looked at her with admiration—Her face was rather round than long—she had a bright, but not a pink colour—a clear brown complexion and very good hazle eyes—She was not, I believe, an absolute beauty, but before she left Steventon she was established as a very pretty girl, in the opinion of most of her neighbors . . . Her hair, a darkish brown, curled naturally—it was in short curls round her face (for then ringlets were not.)”

Caroline was much younger than her aunt, and perhaps her admiration made her see Jane in a more positive light. Her sister Anna was older, and got to the point of being very good friends with Jane, and almost feeling like her peer. She sought Jane’s advice on her marriage and brought around silly books she had gotten from the lending library for their general amusement. She even started to write and Jane offered guidance.

She wrote in a letter to her brother James-Edward:

“This has brought me to the period of my own greatest share of intimacy; the two years before my marriage, & the two or three years after, when we lived, as you know almost close to Chawton when the original 17 years between us seemed to shrink to 7—or to nothing. It comes back to me now how strangely I missed her; it had become so much a habit with me to put by things in my mind with a reference to her and to say to myself, ‘I shall keep this for Aunt Jane.’”

But Anna was not so entirely gracious about Jane’s appearance:

“The Figure tall & slight, but not drooping; well balanced, as was proved by her quick firm step. Her complexion of that rather rare sort which seems the peculiar property of light brunettes. A mottled skin, not fair, but perfectly clear & healthy in hue; the fine naturally curling hair, neither light nor dark; the bright hazel eyes to match, & the rather small but well shaped nose.”

Which all sounds very nice. And then Anna adds: “One hardly understands how with all these advantages she could yet fail of being a decidedly handsome woman.”

I have often felt that way myself—there are parts that should add up to a good-looking whole that don’t entirely. Tall and thin, with lovely eyes, a decent complexion (not as much of that smooth tan as I would like to have gotten from my Norwegian forebears, but still, decent), a nose which could be called “small but well shaped,” thick-ish brown hair that looks good when I do something with it, although that’s not very often, and cheeks which are “a little too full,” which is how another family acquaintance described Jane. My ears are crooked, and there are moments when I look in the mirror and think the jowls are beginning. Then there are moments when I catch myself in the mirror and think it’s not so bad as I thought, and maybe it’s actually far better than I usually imagine. But I’ve often thought that, if there is beauty here, it is with a kind of weirdness underlying it—like the disproportions of Cassandra’s sketch—which throws everything off.

The current American fashion, as everyone knows, is boobs-on-a-stick. As I am not actually a stick figure, and you have to have a good imagination to see my breasts, I do not exactly fit in. But then, I think this is not really a trend for normal women so much as for cocaine addicted, surgically altered models.

I try to tell my friends that I am actually a fat little skinny girl, but no one believes me. The only place on my body that seems capable of carrying fat cells is my stomach, which I wouldn’t mind if there were something to balance it out, but there’s not, so on my worst days I look rather disproportioned.

If you caught me sitting on the couch you would as likely see my little pudgy stomach sticking out as not. The thing is, it’s easy to hide these particular faults with a good outfit, a series of carefully constructed optical illusions. But it is still there, this weird little body, my skinny little frame with the stomach of a much larger woman, and I know it even when other people don’t.

My sister-in-law, who is wise and witty, tells me that women are supposed to have stomachs. Jane probably had a stomach and couldn’t have cared. But then, they were (and I think the British still are) much more satisfied with normal sorts of bodies than we are.

I don’t believe in plastic surgery. For one thing, I think it’s far easier to learn to be content with your body than to have someone knock you out, cut you open, and stuff foreign objects inside you. Maybe I’ve got that wrong. Maybe surgery really is easier than contentment. But I think contentment is healthier and more admirable and in some way much more attractive. So I am choosing to believe that my stomach looks big only because the rest of me is so very small.

I don’t think Jane would have wanted to be the most beautiful person in the room. I imagine that she was incredibly content with her own little blend of beauty and intelligence and wit.

She gives her characters only the vaguest physical descriptions. Odd that we have such clear pictures of them in our minds, because she didn’t labor over this at all. We get to know them most through what they say, their friendships, their place in society, the choices they make.

Anne Hathaway as Jane

2006-10-02T15:33:00.000-05:00

There is a lot of talk these days among Austen fans about an upcoming movie, Becoming Jane, starring Anne Hathaway. It's set to release in the UK in mid-March '07. The US release date hasn't been announced yet.

Most Austen devotees are pretty upset about the movie. Some are saying that Anne (of Princess Diaries and Brokeback Mountain fame) is too pretty to play Jane, who was regarded as pretty but not altogether beautiful. The real problem, to echo Mags at AustenBlog, is that the movie is essentially a Made-Up Story. Only, most moviegoers won't realize that because they don't know much about Austen's life to begin with!

The movie focuses on Jane's "relationship" (which might better be called a flirtation) with Tom Lefroy when she was twenty. It examines how this love and consequent heartbreak influenced her writing. Apparently the filmmakers have taken incredible liberties.

It seems that they've made Cassandra, Jane's sister, into a married woman. (In real life, her fiancee died of yellow fever in the West Indies, and she never seriously considered anyone else.) They've taken out Jane's dear friend Anne Lefroy completely, who is one of the most interesting characters in Jane's life, I think, and who was Tom's aunt and so would have been involved in the goings-on.

I'm an Anne-fan, but all of this makes me sick. The real story of Jane's life is compelling enough as is, without all the Hollywood-style rewriting. As Mags pointed out recently, couldn't they have given it a Shakespeare in Love, wink-wink, this is all a farce quality? At least then people would know they are watching fiction.

Anyway, in honor of Anne, and the "is she too pretty?" debate, I'm offering a little riff on beauty, one of my favorite things from the book. Look for that starting early next week.

Dear Lady Grey

2006-10-02T14:55:00.000-05:00

My friend Kristine mentioned the other day that companies are paying bloggers to write about their products. So, I feel compelled to tell you about one of my absolute favorite things. (And if anyone out there from Twinings is listening, well, there's more where this came from, as I am looking for creative ways to pay for my health insurance--see post below.)

Lady Grey tea just makes me happy. On the days when I'm settling in to write, to try to get a lot done, I brew a whole pot and take it out on my back deck in the sun, with my notes or my word processor. I can't explain why I love it so much, it's just comforting. Kind of citrusy-flowery, but not too strong.

I first had it at C.S. Lewis's house, The Kilns, in Oxford. We stopped by for a brief tour and they served us tea and biscuits in the library where Lewis did his writing. We were amazed, and the tea was lovely.

Amazon has it in both regular and decaf, at a great price. (I've never seen decaf before!)

Anyway, happy 300th birthday, Twinings. And thanks for the Lady Grey.

Don't get me started...

2006-10-02T14:39:00.000-05:00

Forgive me for the diversion from Austen, but today I'm compelled to write about the state of health care. (Hear me out. It's not quite as boring as it sounds.) I spent $556 last week filling two prescriptions, and I only filled the two that I really needed. There are four more to be filled in the next month.

My cobra coverage ran out, because it's been 18 months since I left my job. I thought I had another plan lined up, through a large association for the self-employed. I met with someone, he explained the details of the plan, I applied and waited the thirty days to hear what they said. Only, at the end of that time, I discovered not only that they had rejected me, but also that the sales guy had been far from honest. Ugh. It's a long story, and I could fight the decision, but the whole thing left me with a very bad taste in my mouth, so I decided to go elsewhere, and now I am uncovered and waiting another 30 days to get a response from another company.

All told, it seems that my health care costs are going to be somewhere between $850 and $1200 a month. I have been in a state of sheer panic. While I'm solvent at the moment, I just really don't know where all this money is going to come from. It's devastating, and there's nothing I can do about it.

It's the blasted Lyme disease. And the way our ridiculous system is set up, so that if you have a job you are guaranteed covereage and if you are self-employed--well, I am still guaranteed coverage under HIPAA laws, but it seems there's really no limit to what they can charge me.

Really, the best way for someone who's single and self-employed to get decent health care in this country is to get married. It's a travesty.

"How ill I have written..."

2006-09-14T16:58:00.000-05:00

"How ill I have written. I begin to hate myself." -- JA

Jane wrote this at the close of a letter to her sister, Cassandra, on September 18, 1796 (letter number 7 in Deirdre Le Faye's collection for anyone who wants to look it up). She is only referring to the letter, either to her writing style or her handwriting, but I echo these sentiments.

One of the things I have always loved about writing is what Anne Lamott calls the shitty first draft. I don't particularly love the SFD, or the necessity of writing one, but I love that it is completely and entirely my own and that no one else knows how poorly I have written because I keep everything to myself until it is cleaned up and presentable.

Then came the blog, and now there are all of these little pieces of writing out there, all of these pieces of my draft, some of which rightly belong in the SFD and will never see the light of day. Except that they're there for you to read. I have been panicking about this (particularly some of the posts from Hampshire, but I don't want to tell you which ones for fear that you will run off and read them). I have been wanting to keep everything to myself lately.

Last week I ran into another problem. I have just begun the process of serious editing--serious, okay-let's-make-this-publishable editing. I discovered that the entire thing was crap. (The beginning, at least. The middle has some potential.) I begin to hate myself.

Every writer goes through this, I tell myself. The publishers liked it. You liked it. I even liked it for a while. If nothing else, I try to remember, much more ridiculous things have been published, so in the end, it will probably be okay.

Today was a difficult day and I was only able to edit for about 20 minutes. It was enough to make me think that maybe it isn't entirely hopeless. And there are some things I would really like you to read.

Begin at the beginning

2006-09-05T12:27:00.000-05:00

Occasionally people email me and ask how to read the blog in order. Unfortunately, there's not really an easy way to do that.

Start with the first blook post, and then follow the archives, reading the numbered posts in order (which means you kind of have to read backwards through the archives). You may occasionally have to come back to the home page to find the next archive link.

"She'll live. Mama, she's conscious! She'll live!"

2006-09-05T11:07:00.000-05:00

(Bonus points to anyone who can tell me where that quote comes from.)

Wanted to let you know, gentle readers, that I am, in fact, alive. Now, to resuscitate this blog.

I've come through an incredibly dark time, weeks when I couldn't get off the couch, when I would lie (or is it lay? I never could get that one straight) there alone and sleep and watch tv all day, and then go to bed at night. There is a kind of bondage I can't really explain, when you literally cannot do all the normal daily things, like water the plants, answer the phone, make something to eat. It was incredibly quiet and isolating, and entirely out of my control. I felt like someone was holding my head under water and there was nothing I could do about it. I developed a strange attachment to my butcher knife, woke up in the middle of the night with an insatiable urge to destroy things. It was as close to suicidal as I ever want to be, and I'm hoping it's passed.

Some of this was a result of the Lyme disease, but added to that were multiple bad reactions to new medications we were trying. Then I had to go off of sugar and flour (for medical reasons I really don't feel like getting into here), and this was really the final straw. No brownies. No cookies. No French bread. No ice cream. Absolutely no alcohol. Very little fruit. Meat and vegetables--have you ever tried to survive on just meat and vegetables? It is actually impossible.

The first week in August things began to level out and I was able to start writing again, slowly. It was like a small light had begun and was strengthening. Some days it is brighter than others, it waxes and wanes, occasionally I fear that it's gone away entirely again, but it is warmer and brighter here than it used to be, than it has been for months. I'm able to write a few days a week, for a couple hours. Every week I hope for more.

Most encouraging to me, I love the book. I'm just enjoying writing it and love how it's turning out. I'm hopeful that it will be coherent, readable and--most of all--fun.

A very real sort of book...

2006-07-13T11:55:00.000-05:00

Dear friends,

I've not written here for so long that I barely know how to start. I'm very pleased to announce that it's official -- Following Austen will be published by WaterBrook, a division of Random House, to be released on Sept. 1, 2007. I'm thrilled.

But -- as you may have guessed by my silence here -- my life is nearly overwhelmed at the moment by the terrifying darkness that is Lyme disease. There are moments of light, but they are more like lightning bugs than anything else -- showing up briefly and quickly fading away. Three weeks ago Friday I was able to make a pot of tea, and sit outside to write a little, and actually go for a little walk on the trail behind my house. I can't tell you how good, how significant, these small things are to me. (There are things that require energy that I never realized required energy -- things like sitting up straight, taking a bath, reading a book. Only when everything is taken away do you realize how much you take for granted in your everyday life.)

I have been writing parts of the book in my head, but have been unable to actually start writing again. Pray that I will be able to write.

600 words

2006-06-19T14:51:00.000-05:00

It's begun: deadline hell. No contract is signed, no publishing decision made, but it's close enough that I know I've got to start seriously writing if I'm going to finish in time. 600 words a day, six days a week, for roughly the next four months (though that bit is still up in the air). With any luck, many of them will be decent and I'll post them here.

Since I throw out about half of what I write, I should probably aim for 1,200 a day, just to be safe. And then, in the evenings, research and editing, and in the cracks and crevices various other assignments and the (forgive me, P.) rather boring work I do that helps to pay the bills. (Which all feels nearly impossible, considering that on my good days, I've been able to do about 3 hours worth of work.) And thanks to the economics of the publishing business, I'll still be toiling in relative poverty.

600 words a day sounds manageable -- Bird by Bird, as Anne Lamott would say, bird by bird, baby. What keeps me awake at night is the days I know I will miss, or write horrible, awful stuff that no one could ever print. Or be mysteriously unable to get off the couch again. And then I will get to a Saturday and be 3,600 or 7,200 words behind and the most attractive option, at that point, will be to slit my wrists.

It's at this point in the process that sheer panic sets in. WHAT THE #@$#! WAS I THINKING? Why exactly did I think I could write a book about JANE AUSTEN -- only one of the most beloved writers EVER? And more importantly, WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP ME?

(If you've ever thought about writing a book, please reconsider now.)

I am considering crawling under a rock to await my fate. Maybe you will hear from me again. Maybe you will not.

If I could afford the ticket to Oxford, you would find me mumbling and shuffling along the Folly Bridge at night. That sounds like a lovely life, actually...

The great unwashed

2006-06-19T14:28:00.000-05:00

Forgive the silence here over the last two weeks -- I've been bed-ridden. Actually, I've been couch-ridden. Very slowly I'm coming out of it, but the last week and a half has been perhaps the most difficult since I initially got sick years ago. And if it sounds like terrible fun to be stuck on the couch forced to watch movies for a while, I can tell you that after several days of being unable to do anything else, it leads to the worst kind of despair. I couldn't work, or return voice mails, or email. My muscles were exhausted, so climbing the stairs to look at my computer was a feat in itself. And don't even think about showering. (Sheesh. This is depressing.) I never want to watch TV again. And that's saying something.

I talked to my doctor again, and he said he was "very encouraged." (Hmmph.) He cut down one of my medications, and indicated that I need to lay low for the next three months -- no travel if I can avoid it, try not to completely overtax myself. It may take a year for me to really start feeling better, and I'm trying to process that as well.

This is probably more than you ever wanted to know about Lyme disease. I promise, we'll get back to Austen soon.

And the very good news...

2006-06-05T12:57:00.000-05:00

In the midst of this month of travel and exhaustion, there's been a lot of activity on the publishing front. More than one publisher is interested in the book. Very interested.

I've never been in the position of saying to a publisher, Tell me again, why should I work with you? And that is a nice place to be.

Like Elizabeth in P&P (after Darcy proposes), I know that I'm happy more than feeling that I am. I'm sure when I recover enough I will feel the weight of this very good news. But it seems -- there's no signed contract, so I don't want to jinx anything -- it seems that this book will actually come to be. With a publisher who's darn enthusiastic about it. Which is very, very cool.

Exhaustion, ever-present

2006-06-05T12:40:00.000-05:00

I went to church yesterday with shaking hands, which I think is caused by the antibiotics, because they're shaking all the time now. And I'm crying a lot. Mostly people don't notice, I think, because I'm fairly good at hiding both. I was trying to appear normal, and trying to pay attention and make sense of things through this veil of exhaustion, and praying I wouldn't have to run to the bathroom (one of the other effects of the antibiotics). And then I took communion, forgetting that one of the medications says not to take EVEN A SIP of alcohol, as the effects will be disastrous, and also forgetting that now that I'm a good Anglican communion means wine and not grape juice.

And then I went home to lay on the couch and try to sleep, and try to read.

Saturday night I worked up all of my energy to go pick up Chinese food. It's only five minutes away, but it was just about more than I could handle -- getting in the car, parking, walking in, driving home, my hands shaking again. And then I got home and found out that they had given me only string beans, instead of chicken and string beans, and I fell apart. I tried to tell them that I couldn't drive back and pick up the correct order -- I really couldn't. I'm sure they didn't understand. But eventually they sent a driver with my chicken, and had the gall to ask for their string beans back.

Hatteras sun

2006-06-05T11:49:00.000-05:00

There's something incredibly healing to me about beach sun.

After getting back from France and crashing for a few days, I headed down to North Carolina, to meet my best friends from college and their families. There were seven adults, and nine children (9!) -- the best behaved children ever, and next to my nieces, my favorite kids in all the world.

Some of them are getting to be all grown up and reminding me that my friends are actually going to be launching little humans into the world in a few years (okay, 8 or 9 years, which still sounds very close). They sometimes get picked on at school and are developing wonderful character and minds and I am afraid maybe they don't know just how great they are.

And some of them are still small enough that they want to just be in your lap. Sweet three-year-old Sarah was attached to me all weekend and I have to say, it's lovely to be adored by a three-year-old. (I think maybe that's my favorite age.) We were reading a book and I said, "Why don't we go downstairs and see what everyone else is doing?" and she said, "But, we're all alone." Like, why in the world would I want to be around all those other kids? So we snuggled (which, I think, is also healing).

We had lovely weather -- sun and fog and rain, but mostly sun. We sat in the hot tub for hours. We swam in the pool. We ate far too much -- doughnuts, Rice Krispie treats, ice cream, more ice cream. We hung out on the beach and watched the kids play. Mostly, we just were.

Croissants and a concert

2006-05-24T17:33:00.000-05:00

There were some lovely moments on the trip, in the midst of the Lyme disease stupor.

I ate chocolate croissants every morning for breakfast and still lost five pounds. I'm convinced it doesn't work that way in the US, only in France.

I remembered that I love espresso. And I heard one waiter call it expresso, which is how my mom says it, which made me laugh.

I discovered that Air France has absolutely the best food in the airline business. It actually smelled so good it made you want to eat, even if you weren't hungry. And, the wine is free.

I drank my coffee every morning at the table in our courtyard, with the just-opening jasmine covering one wall and pots of lavendar and begonias.

I remembered the importance of good wine, which doesn't have to be expensive wine. In the Languedoc region, you can get stuff for 2 or 3 Euros at the grocery store and it's fabulous. (At least, to non-conissuers like me.) And thank goodness for Trader Joe's which serves the same purpose here.

We went to a Mediterranean beach one day -- Vieux de Cap, in Agde, a black sand beach protected by cliffs. It was lovely -- hot, perfect. Except for the really old guy wearing a g-string who chose to do much dressing and undressing (accompanied by much bending over) just in front of us.

The second day in Paris, I got to go to a concert in Saint Germain des Pres, a chamber orchestra playing Mozart. The church was dark and heavy, and only about 1/3rd full. The music was so comforting and full of life, against that dusty backdrop.

On our last night in Paris, Melissa's dad sprang for dinner for all of us. He wasn't on the trip, but he made reservations for us at a restaurant called Laserre with instructions to enjoy ourselves. It was the nicest restaurant I've ever been in. When we arrived at 7 we were the only people there, and there were about 15 (or more?) waiters hovering, their only objective to ensure that all of our needs were met. The room was full of orchids. The ceiling was open. They brought out tiny bites of things while we ordered, so I tried foie gras and sushi and something else that was very good but we had no idea what it was. The salad had Delphinium flowers on it. All the flavors were intense and everything was so carefully done. When we had finished everything, they brought out more tiny bites of dessert (little chocolates and caramels and creme de menthe with chocolate on a stick and single raspberries perched on tiny sponge cakes -- everything made from scratch by their chefs). Amazing. I felt completely pampered.

It definitely more than made up for the ugly Frenchman we encountered the day before. We were attempting to see a bit of Provence, and misread the map and ended up in what could only be called bad France -- a gypsy beach town in the middle of nowhere. We walked out to the beach and a guy said, "Be careful, the water's cold," and then threw a bucket of water on all of us, from behind. Sheesh. I think the ugly French people and the ugly Americans should all get together, and spew their hate on each other. Then they would all be satisfied because their very low expectations of the other culture would be more than met. And they could leave us out of it.

Sweet, sweet home (and shitty France)

2006-05-24T16:29:00.000-05:00

I was so incredibly glad to be home on Sunday. Two weeks away makes everything look different, and my house (which needs an inordinate number of repairs) seemed so sweet -- perfect, almost. I decided that I love the red couch in the odd-shaped living room, the dining room table which actually only serves to hold piles of mail and newspapers, the love seat in the sunroom which I haven't touched since our visiting mouse decided it was one of his favorite perches. I am still not fond of the tub in my master bathroom, with its talent for growing orange mold, which excessive doses of Clorox seem unable to stop. But in that moment, even the moldy tub only bothered me a little. And I loved my life.

France, on the other hand, was rather a disaster. Lyme disease and international travel don't mix. I'm not sure why this year is so much worse than last. I could handle England last summer, which was a much more demanding trip. But in the last several months, I've not even been able to complete a ballet class (on the rare occasion I've been able to go I've not been able to do more than barre) and a very good day is one in which I'm able to work 4-6 hours. If I can manage the grocery store as well, that's something to celebrate. I'm not sure why I thought I could handle an international trip. I had faith that things would be better, I guess.

I wandered around Paris in a semi-catatonic state, the kind of deep exhaustion that is too much to actually enjoy anything. When we made it to our Mediterranean villa, I had a series of lost days and couldn't leave the house. It was a lovely place to be stuck, but infuriating all the same.

One of the hardest things about this disease is that my friends, no matter how much they love me -- and I know they do, and they try to understand -- can't understand what I'm experiencing because they've never been through it themselves. I hope they never do. But at times I also feel very alone.

So I flew home thinking, Fuck Lyme disease. I've had it.

(Okay, my mom is going to read this. And I know there are other gentle readers out there. But I can't find any other word to capture the depth of my frustration. So pardon my French -- or as my friend Bev said when we were in Paris, pardon my English.)

The problem is that willpower alone is not enough to beat this. If it were, I would have won long ago, I'm convinced. I'm incredibly strong (and strong-willed.) Crazy-emotional, but strong.

The doctor told me yesterday that it's normal that I'm not feeling much better yet, that six weeks on antibiotics is too soon to start seeing significant improvements. He said it's a good sign that in some ways my symptoms have gotten a little worse on the antibiotics -- a sign that the antibiotics are attacking the disease in its cyst form, and breaking it up, so that in the short term my body is actually having to deal with more of the active virus rather than less. He added two more pills to the mix -- another antibiotic and another supplement. My stash of pill bottles above the sink looks like it belongs to a 90-year-old.

It's going to be a longer haul than I was hoping for. I still beg God for healing on the days when I have enough faith for that. Perhaps he's only going to work through the slow medical process. That's more hope than I had several months ago, but today it feels long and painful and uncertain.

I don't want more vacation. What I really want is some quiet space, and the energy to do very good work.

And, when I'm better, to go back to England.

Au revoir...

2006-05-09T16:53:00.000-05:00

I'm headed out of the country tonight, for France, traveling with some of my best girlfriends. We'll be in Paris for a few days, then headed down to a cottage in a medieval hamlet on the Mediterranean coast.

I'm a little stressed about leaving. To be honest, I feel like I should be putting all of my limited energy into work, not gallavanting around Europe. (We Smiths don't actually do vacation all that well...) But the trip was planned long ago, and, really, a vacation is in order. I'm praying for rest and healing.

So, look for me back here in about two weeks. Until then, I'll be sitting in cafes, visiting Michelangelo's work in the Louvre, hanging out in the courtyard of our little cottage, drinking vin rouge, and reading terribly meaningful chick lit on the beach.

Au revoir!

45: Divergences (or, the birth of a perfectionist)

2006-05-05T14:47:00.000-05:00

There are several places where Austen and I diverge. She didn’t keep a journal—at least, none that survive. From the time I began writing it was about capturing my own thoughts and feelings.

The summer I was nine, we packed everything up and drove for six hours through central Texas, hundreds of miles of barren dirt punctuated by the occasional Dairy Queen. Everything changed in Wichita Falls. I went to a public school where nothing spoke of home—everything had a tinge of mediocrity to me, and I felt lost. The teaching was perfunctory and cold, far behind the schools I’d been in. The girls were so different. They were reading Judy Blume books and anxiously waiting for their periods to start. I was reading Little House on the Prairie and The Black Stallion, still playing make-believe. I don’t remember having any friends there; I was the awkward one without anyone to talk to.

Ballet was lost, just when I could have gone on pointe—we couldn’t find a studio. I’m not sure I even told my mom how much I wanted to keep dancing. Instead, the whole family took up tennis; my brother and I had hours of practice every day after school and all summer in the hot sun. Our house on Lou Lane, walking distance from the university, flooded that first spring. Three feet of water floated away baby pictures and ruined shoes. I remember feeling poor, wearing hand-me-down clothes that someone from church brought over, and realizing that now I knew what it felt like—for a brief time, at least—to be in need.

I started making straight A’s. I became a perfectionist. And I started to write.

I can remember sitting on the formal couch in the living room, looking out the tall windows at a rare north Texas snow, writing bad elementary-school poems about God. The journal—brown, with pink and white flowers—has disappeared, but I’m sure I’ll be horrified when I find it. And then there are notebooks of self-indulgent, poorly written journals going back to high school. I can’t throw them away, but I can’t bear to read them, either.

As far as we know, there was none of this for Jane, no self-indulgent scribbling, no journaling about her feelings or about trying to find her place in the world. Her “quiet life” had its share of upheaval. Her first experience at the boarding school in Oxford must have been somewhat traumatic. A few years later, when she and Cassandra were at a different school with their cousin Jane Cooper, a fever broke out. Mrs. Austen and her sister rushed in to get the girls, but their aunt Cooper caught the fever and died shortly after. The household was constantly changing as Jane’s brothers were sent off to school—James and Henry to Oxford, Frank and Charles at a younger age to naval school—and returned home. At twenty, of course, she met Tom Lefroy, and immediately lost him again. Cousin Jane Cooper went on to marry extraordinarily well, only to die in a coach accident several years later, when Jane was twenty-three. At twenty-five she lost the dear family home at Steventon when her parents abruptly announced her father’s retirement and the family move to Bath. At twenty-nine, her dear friend Anne Lefroy died in a riding accident on Jane’s birthday, and then Jane’s own beloved father died, sending the small family unit of mother and two daughters spiraling into something close to poverty. But there’s no record of any of these in Jane’s own hand, other than in the letters that remain.

Another point where we diverge is the source of our writing. I believe Jane wrote because she was a great conversationalist, full of wit in a day when wit was prized, a sharp observer of society. While I write in many ways from weakness rather than strength--I write because I am a poor conversationalist, because there are so many things I can’t sort out in conversation and have to put in print to get right.

Jane wrote for fun, while I write in some ways from need. Perhaps she felt the need to write as well. Perhaps there were days when it was a burden. But when she made 200 pounds on Sense and Sensibility, she spoke of the great return for “that which had cost her nothing.”

Make me a kept woman

2006-05-02T10:29:00.000-05:00

Many people believe the freelance life consists of whiling away the hours at cafes, contemplating the nature of life and succeeding in incredibly meaningful artistic endeavors. There is some of that, I'll grant you (though the artistic endeavors are usually fraught with anxiety, as well). And today I'm sitting at home in jeans and flip-flops, drinking a big cup of coffee. My hair is still wet. It's 11:45. But, allow me to disabuse you of some of your notions about the freelance life.

I'm working on an article today, for example. I can't tell you who it's for, other than to say that it's a fairly well-known Christian publication--and because it's in the Christian market it doesn't pay much. I first sent in the query in mid-September, roughly 8 months ago. The editor knew me a little and liked my writing, and they wanted the article. (Yay!) So, I followed their suggestions for the piece and within a month had it turned in. I rather liked it. I was waiting for their edits, but--mostly--waiting for my check.

When I hadn't heard from them in six weeks, I followed up. After two months, they gave me some additional direction and asked me to rework a few things. No problem. A few weeks later I had it back to them with their changes. Again, waiting. (Check, please!)

Two more months and no word, so I followed up yet again. A few more edits. Now it was my turn to slow up the process, between working on the book proposal and not feeling well. So I will turn it in finally (and hopefully for good) tomorrow. Luckily, they pay on acceptance rather than publication, but it could still take 2-3 months to get my check, depending on how long their final approval process takes. All told, almost a year. And all of that for $0.25/word.

Do you still want my life?

Every freelancer has numerous stories like that. I could tell you about the piece I pitched for 9 months that finally got accepted by a magazine I very much wanted to write for. And then how they cut this precious little article in half (and they only pay you for what actually gets printed). Or about the piece I did for an editor who is also a friend who rejected it out of hand without giving me a chance to make any edits at all--after telling me he wanted it, after I was counting on that $300. Or the huge 5000-word piece I did on spec for a major magazine that didn't make the cut. (And how I realized later that piece actually was crap. Ugh.)

I have some regular gigs, and of course every article isn't torturous. I love my life, actually. I just wouldn't wish it on anyone.

At the Calvin Festival on Faith and Writing, there was one panel that was especially encouraging and discouraging at the same time. It was on freelancing, moderated by Jana Riess of Publishers Weekly and including Lauren Winner, Andy Crouch and Cindy Crosby. I went, really, to commiserate--to hear them say how hard this is. And they did. And then they talked about the wonders of being a kept man or woman, of being married to someone who has health insurance and a salary.

So this is my dilemma. If even Lauren Winner is having trouble making ends meet, chances are it's not going to get significantly better for me anytime soon. (Although, if I get a book contract, I should be solvent for several months, at least.) But there is a way out.

Guys, my COBRA runs out mid-August. I am entertaining rich men--I mean, suitors. (And I mean 'entertaining' in the good old-fashioned way. Minds out of the gutter, please.) But seriously, guys without health insurance need not apply.

44: San Antonio

2006-04-26T12:55:00.000-05:00

I first tasted Haagen Dazs coffee ice cream when I was eight years old, sitting at an outdoor table overlooking the ocean, everything seemingly whitened by the sun. It was one of those small moments that children tend to remember, the cold metal bowl with perfect round scoops, the lovely taste from something that seemed like it should be bitter and strange, the mid-level resort which felt designed to pamper us. We were in Hawaii for the first time. Grammy and Bob paid for most of everything, which meant that we could afford to fly first class, with soft wide leather seats. When I think of my childhood, I think of the bright sun—the Texas sun, the Hawaiian sun—and the water, the clear blue of chlorinated pools or the darker ocean.

We lived in San Antonio then, which had all my favorite childhood memories—the long backyard where we had sack races, and pinatas at birthday parties; the classroom full of kids I had known for three-and-a-half years, which at that point seemed like all my life. We wore maroon plaid uniforms to school, with matching knee socks and white shirts. My shirts and uniforms were invariably wrinkled, my socks rolled down to form perfect, big tubes around my ankles. My handwriting sprawled. I got B’s and a couple A’s and thought that was really fantastic. Susan, with her white-blond wavy hair always got the straight A awards, which seemed ridiculously over the top. One of my best friends, Diane, wrote as perfectly as the examples in the book and even then seemed more put together than I would ever be. We had crushes on the cute boys and passed them notes during class to see if they might happen to return our affection (to which they remained determinedly aloof).

The elementary kids had races every year in a huge field beyond the playground. In second or third grade I won the 400-meter with my big brother running alongside me the whole way cheering me on. Beyond that was an old drive-through that made strawberry milkshakes with real strawberries where we walked after school while mom was working on her lesson plans. And then there was dance class, and the stage, where I thrived on small recitals in big auditoriums with huge lights and applause. I loved every minute of performing. It made me happy in a way nothing else did.

My brother played in endless weekend basketball games, in small gyms where there was nothing to do but be bored and sit in the girls bathroom talking to my friend Jeanene. And there were sleepovers at Diane’s with her neat, organized, put-together house; or Jennifer’s, happily crowded with smaller children; or Jeanene’s, out in the country, where sometimes scorpions came up through the drains—enough to keep a small child awake at night.

I knew that Diane and I, our families were about the same. And that Jennifer’s was poorer, maybe a level below us, but it seemed wonderful to me, all those children in their small house, all eating together around the thin kitchen table, with bowls and plates and cups that didn’t match. And Jeanene’s family did not seem to care about church so much. Her mother had big hair and wore thick makeup; she gave us green-apple chewing gum and taught us the itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny bikini song.

We were in a new house in a suburb, with white sheetrock walls and maroon shag carpet. My brother and I had bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, and for some reason, although I had never seen Psycho, I was afraid in that shower. (What is there to be afraid of when your parents are there to protect you? But still I saw shadows and made them into evil men, and was always rinsing my hair in a panic.) The narrow lawn sloped up behind the house for what seemed like ages. Thick, menacing-looking spiders popped out of small holes in the metal swingset from time to time, so I covered the holes with Scotch tape before I went on swinging.

Hard Texas rains brought with them threats of tornadoes, cooling and softening the air, releasing all the backyard scents just beyond the sliding kitchen door—the yellowing sod struggling to put down roots, the dirt splashing into mud—where we sat eating our occasional Saturday-night steaks and salads.

The pool went in after my first-grade year, I think. I lived in bathing suits, smelling of chlorine and Coppertone, my skin getting darker and darker until I would be the only girl in dance class who didn’t need to wear hose for our pictures. I’ve always been lighter than my father whom I take after most, who seems to be somewhat lighter than his father, whom I never met but they say could have passed for an American Indian.

Vacation always meant the beach. We camped under the pines at Myrtle, hunted sand dollars in the wide expanses of Corpus Christi, went back to Hawaii a couple times.

But there was no stability for us, no quiet village. We were plucked up every two to four years, moving from one Air Force assignment to the next. In Phoenix, where my brother was born, my mom fell in love with the smell of the orange blossoms. I made my grand entry at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, when all the leaves were changing and the sun had assumed its October intensity. After six months in Virginia Beach, where I always avoided the ocean for fear of sharks, we headed to lovely Hispanic San Antonio. And then when I was nine, we moved to barren, tornado-alley Wichita Falls, where my dad was squadron commander of a NATO training unit.

I didn’t grasp the craziness of this life. It was normal to me, what happened to so many families we knew. I understood at a young age that my friends could only be friends for a couple of years, and then I’d be moving on. (In some ways, when you live like that, you become adept at building temporary friendships.) The only permanence our family had was our love for each other, and our faith—both of which, however imperfect, left me with a sense of great abundance.

43: Home and family

2006-04-25T14:04:00.000-05:00

The Austen home was warm, full of laughter and love. Perhaps I’m reading into this what I want, the way those historians do who imagine Jane to have been a rather harsh feminist, and her father to have been involved in the slave trade. But we know that in their adult years the family all genuinely respected each other, that there was a great deal of friendship and camaraderie—an enviable family to have been part of.

They had their hints of dysfunction. (Is any family without them?) James, the oldest, could be demanding and officious. Edward, not unlike his mother, developed a talent for imagining himself ill. Charming Henry had some difficulty making his way in the world, and at one point went bankrupt and lost some valuable family holdings. If Jane and Cassandra had a weakness it was that they were generally thought to have rushed into spinsterhood, hurrying themselves into middle age. But all the children remained close throughout their lives.

There were eight in all, six before Jane and one after her, all delivered with no anesthesia and remarkably with no problems. Well, perhaps there were problems with George, the second. Many people who talk about the Austen family say there were only seven children, and I think it is because they are forgetting George. We don’t know exactly what was wrong with him, but he appears to have been learning disabled in some way, and had fits. It’s possible he was deaf and dumb. The Austens sent him to live in Monk Sherborne, a neighboring village, with the same people who cared for Mrs. Austen’s younger brother, who struggled with similar difficulties. The Austen parents seem to have visited George and loved him, but he was apparently not a great part of their lives.

Actually, all of the children were sent out when they were small to stay with a family in the village, after about three months of breastfeeding and careful attention. (Claire Tomalin details this in Jane Austen: A Life.) The Austens visited the babies every day during their 12- or 18-month stay with the nurse. The village is so small, it’s easy to believe that the little ones still saw their parents all the time. Though it sounds cruel to us, it seems to have been an accepted part of raising chidren then. As Tomalin points out, they did not understand the significant bond between mother and child. Perhaps even if they did understand, they would have done it anyway, as a means of survival—running a household, farm and school along with a growing family, without any extended family nearby, you can imagine the couple needed help.

So there they were—James, Edward, Henry, Cassandra, Frank, Jane and Charles—with a mother who loved to write charming little poems and a father who could teach them all they would ever need to know of Greek and Latin.

Festival of Faith & Writing

2006-04-19T11:25:00.000-05:00

I had hoped to write so much more this week, but spent an inordinate amount of time on my taxes (#$#@!) and on trying to get better. (Thankfully, things in that department seem to be headed in the right direction, aside from occasional relapses.)

I'm headed off today to the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing, which will feature writers like Marilynne Robinson, Lauren Winner, Donald Miller and Salman Rushdie (!). So excited to get to go. Hope to be back here in full force next week.

42: St. Nicholas

2006-04-13T08:45:00.000-05:00

The next few posts may be a little repetitive for those who read the travel article I posted earlier about walking with Jane. But, of course, there's still some great stuff here!

Jane Austen had an idyllic childhood. This is easy to say, since I did not live her childhood (and it is what I imagine people would say about my own, although my own didn’t feel that way—normal, maybe, free of tragedy, but not idyllic).

This was just one of the thoughts threading through my mind as I sat on a bench in the graveyard of St. Nicholas church in Steventon Monday morning. Jane, my friend from the Abbey, had finished her retreat yesterday and gone back home, but offered to drop me here today on her way to Basingstoke. I had not rented a car, not wanting to attempt driving on the wrong side of the road, with no one to navigate. Only, I discovered, public transportation is nearly non-existent in Hampshire. So that morning Dom Nicholas knocked on my door as I was drying my hair. “The bus to Steventon has arrived. We are having coffee,” he said, in a voice that hinted of reprimand. “Be quick!”

My mind was pulsing and jumping to be here in the village where Jane spent her first 25 years. I had to—impossible to come all this way and not accomplish this—go inside the church, but as yet, the doors were stuck, or locked, or I just didn’t know how to open them. I wanted to find the site of the rectory, the old well the only remaining landmark. And I planned to spend most of the four hours I had hiking through the countryside Jane knew so well, in search of her friend Anne Lefroy’s house.

The very air seemed to buzz. My ears were opened to new noises—raucous bugs and birds, the same activity I had seen yesterday as I sat by the willow pond. I expected to find it quiet, which it was, but it was also fully alive. Every stalk of grass, every bit of water held movement. It made me remember the layers of sounds and activity that we forget about, silenced beneath our concrete and condos, drowned out by cell phones and TVs.

Most of us know little of this natural realm anymore, I suppose, but Jane would have been tuned to its cues—when the chestnuts dropped in the fall, the damage a spring storm could do, which kind of winter fronts could be weathered in thick pattens and which would leave the women housebound for weeks on end.

There are twenty or so mostly kept-up graves spread around the graveyard. Jane’s brother James and his two wives are buried here, along with some of the Digweed family who lived in the manor house when Jane was a girl. A massive yew tree fills the front yard. They used to hide the church key here until someone stole it. I think this tradition went back to Austen’s day, but I’m not sure. I looked for the key anyway, hoping for some stroke of luck, but found nothing.

The church sits at the end of a very small lane, the only cross-street in town, which turns to gravel past the churchyard. The brick manor, rebuilt, is just across this lane, and the rest of the church is surrounded by a field of high grass, through which an Englishman in shorts (someone ought to tell them not to wear shorts when they are so terribly white) was running his dogs. He thought the church would be open. I tried again. No luck. The directions for finding the site of the rectory were indecipherable; the Lefroy home—some two or three miles off—felt easier. So I set off through the fields.

41: Again, grace

2006-04-12T11:43:00.000-05:00

I’m not sure why the goodness and grace of God were so oppressive to me there at Alton Abbey.

The great (and embarrassing) disappointment of my life thus far has been the not-getting-married thing. (Embarrassing partly because I have not been asked, never been adored like that, and partly because in this feminist age I still want it so much.) And if that will sound crazy to some, since I am currently 34 and still very marryable, it may help to know the expectations in the conservative Christian world in which I was raised. Girls were supposed to grow up, go to college, and get married. Nearly all of my friends did just that. Well, two of my best friends got married before our senior year.

So as the years went on I worried about trying to catch up to them and their growing families, and gradually came to realize—contrary to popular American Christian belief—that God does not always give you what you want.

The American Christian mentality can be a dangerous one. We are so successful, so rich, that we begin to equate these things with the blessing of God. And they are great blessings, to be sure. But in some ways this leads to a faith that evaluates God’s work in our lives (and the lives of our friends) by the amount of stuff we have received. When things work out (marriage, children, 401K) God is clearly present. When things do not work out, we tell ourselves and others to hold on, that God will surely come to our aid and act quickly on our behalf, bringing us what we want/need/desire/cannot live without. These are not entirely untrue; God loves to give us good things. And yet, what we end up with in many ways is a faith focused on all of our riches, a faith that works only in America. (Just thinking about trying to encourage third-world believers the way we talk to each other belies the fact that these “truths” we hold on to are not universal.)

Through the window of this great disappointment, my unmet longing for someone to share life with, my eyes were opened to the other side of God—the withholding side, the hard side, the side that could smite the Amalekites and keep someone in the greatest want.

I chose to believe that this harshness was still love, was still somehow for my best, would work for my good. Of course, I love the freedom of my life. Nothing but my bank account will stop me if I want to fly to Paris for the weekend. And truthfully, I’m thankful not to be responsible for a gaggle of toddlers. But somehow through this loss I grew to associate God’s love with something harsh and difficult, with things that didn’t feel like love at all.

And now I was immersed in sun and friendship and something like love. I felt like God was asking me to believe once again in his actual goodness, in his ability and desire to give me things that not only were good for me, but felt good.

40: Incense and willow

2006-04-11T11:24:00.000-05:00

I went to church Sunday morning without showering, in my t-shirt and jeans and hiking boots, thinking it would be just the four of us like last night. Of course it wasn’t—there was a full congregation in their Sunday clothes, looking at me I felt a bit askance. I determined not to think about it, that this would be one more instance of grace given me on this trip, if reluctantly given on their part.

The church filled with the musky sweetness of incense, thick fragrance pouring out of the Abbot’s swinging censer, overwhelming the small space. I thought I might throw up, and decided instead to try to drink it in like the grace I desperately needed. Dom Andrew spoke on patience and trust. During prayers, the Abbot repeated, “Lord hear us” and we all replied, “Lord, graciously hear us.” It was just what I needed to pray.

I had woken up sick again. Actually, I woke to a noise in the middle of the night—someone going down the hall to the bathroom. I was jarred by the realization that there was no lock on my door and turned on my light for a minute although I knew that would push me into waking. Everything was more awful and terrible and wonderful then, all of my certainty and uncertainty about Jack. For hours after turning the light off, with my eyes closed, trying to sleep, I dreamed and feared—afraid and full of wonder at what my heart already knew, that my life could change so much and so suddenly.

Overwhelmed with emotions and exhaustion, I ended up in Juliet’s room after breakfast in tears, feeling ill and anxious and overcome. She was wonderful. She prayed with me, and walked me through the garden behind the Abbey, to a bench by a lily pond, under a willow.

Jane said that being here on retreat can bring to mind things one doesn’t usually think about. She was mourning her brother, and Juliet mourning a brother who committed suicide years ago. Somehow, in all the quiet, it was the grace of God that overwhelmed me, like my challenge here was to be able to accept good things from his hand. And yet I struggled with what it means to trust God—the God who gives both beautiful and terrible things.

I began to regain my appetite over roast beef, potatoes and Yorkshire pudding at lunch, and then the best lemon meringue pie I’ve ever had. Sunday became a lost day, a day to recover. I had planned to go to Steventon, but I knew I needed rest. I prayed God would heal my body and comfort my heart.

That afternoon I went back to the bench under the willow to journal. The truth was, I concluded, I couldn’t count on Jack. What I knew for sure was that he’s not sure he wants to get married—someday, perhaps, but now?—and that he just started sort of dating a girl from North Carolina, and that officially we were just hanging out.

It felt like so much more than that. And I’m convinced he felt the same things. He never said as much—like Willoughby, it was never spoken but everywhere (or perhaps often) implied. The way he looked at me, watching me walk down the stairs or just paying attention to what I said. He made sure I was next to him. When we didn’t have time to talk about everything he would tell me that he wanted to hear more about what I thought, later. He carried my backpack, and walked on the outside of the sidewalk wherever we went, in that protective southern way.

There was that communion, those myriad unspoken signs that exist between two people, that claim you as each other’s. If he was talking to someone else when I walked in the room I immediately had his attention. Or when I pulled on my white hoodie between classes, he reached over and rescued one of the ties that had gotten stuck inside—taking care of me, putting me right. When I said goodbye to Paul, he watched while trying not to seem to be watching, to see just how close we were, like he imagined there to be competition.

People who didn’t already think we were engaged assumed we were dating or that we would be soon. Everyone believed it—believed in us. Other guys noticed and kept their distance. (Perhaps my active imagination generated this impression, but that was how it seemed.)

So why did he send me off with this kind of uncertainty? I could only assume it was because he was uncertain himself, and that I couldn’t entirely trust it, no matter what I felt.

39: The green sun

2006-04-11T10:17:00.000-05:00

I was thrilled to be on my own when I left Oxford—me and my sixty pounds of luggage and my rail pass.

Four trains—first to Reading, then Ash and Aldershot and Alton—took me from commercial Oxford into the green sun of the English countryside. Hills, wheat fields, copses of trees, vines overgrowing the tracks. My mind was full of goodness, of a tremendous confidence I couldn’t articulate—of Jack’s regard, of my respect for him and his worthiness of it. I was sure I loved him, though I wouldn’t use that word. I’d never felt so sure of anything in my life. I wasn’t so silly as to begin to speculate about exactly what it would mean, though I wondered what form it would take, how long it would take to meander through casual dinners to beach trips with friends and holidays with family, to its perhaps inevitable conclusion.

Perhaps part of the joy of being alone was having this great goodness to consider, this thing that no one around me knew.

My train was late into Reading. I missed my connection, got a chicken sandwich, figured out how to read the train schedules. There are at least ten platforms here, full of people, with small little cafes and newsstands and hanging flowering baskets. When the trains come in, there are just a few minutes for everyone to get off and on, and if you are waiting on the wrong platform you’ll never make it. I kept checking and doublechecking to make sure I had it right.

In Aldershot, I had almost an hour to wait, missing the train earlier having messed up this connection as well. There was just a single platform—or two, I guess, one on each side of the tracks—and a couple simple benches in the sun. The teenage girl who shared my bench was smoking and talking on her mobile and fixing her makeup. A shady-looking guy just down the platform helped me with my bags when the train finally came.

As the trip stretched out over three hours, my elation and certainty waned, my exhaustion began to take over.

38: Emma

2006-04-11T10:08:00.000-05:00

The other guests—Jane, Trish, and Juliet—invited me to join them for a cup of tea, but what I wanted more than anything else was to be alone in the comforting silence.

I ran a bath in the long narrow tub that reminded me somehow of a casket. I didn’t care. I was overwhelmed with the sense of peace.

Back in my room I tried to read Emma, but my own life felt tied to it in some way. The connections were too close, the story bringing me back to the one subject that had been disrupting all my thoughts. I read two pages, turning things with Jack over and around in my mind again. I looked out the window at the dark shadows of trees and wondered at being so close to Austen, in the middle of the countryside she knew and loved.

At 10:30 I turned out the light and fell into the easiest sleep I’d had in weeks.

37: Abbey silence

2006-04-07T12:02:00.000-05:00

My welcome to Hampshire was soft and quiet—the dusky air, the green trees overarching the stone buildings of Alton Abbey.

My cab pulled into the parking lot at exactly the wrong time, around ten to eight. (“Right, Jane Austen. So you’re American, yeah? Always the Americans—and the Japanese, too—tourists, coming to see Jane Austen stuff. Don’t understand it myself, ” William, the driver, said in a thick-ish and to my untrained ears, working-class accent.) The brothers were in the chapel praying, or meeting. Dom Nicholas, the guestmaster, heard my car and came to meet me, slightly bent, feet moving fast beneath his ankle-length black robes.

“Mrs. Smith,” he called me. I guessed that he might be somewhere between sixty and seventy, maybe closer to the higher end, with whitening hair and softening skin. He is about six feet tall, on the thin side, and carried my terribly heavy bag up the stairs before treating me to a half-whispered tour with his Irish lilt.

My room spoke of solace—terribly clean, a worn parquet floor, two twin beds with duvets, a large window overlooking the wide lawn and rose garden. The monks’ quarters were down the hall, behind a closed door. Should I need anything at night, he said, after they had closed themselves up, all I needed to do was knock on their door.

The Abbey itself is big and meandering. It must feel small to the six or eight men who live there—the Abbot has been there forty years, I think—but it took me a while to get my bearings. The hall and wide stairway outside my room have windows looking out on a central stone courtyard, with benches and water plants and a fountain. There is a huge great room, with five or six couches, bookshelves with games, big chairs, and old-fashioned bay windows looking out onto the garden. Next door is the dining room, where our meals would be taken in silence. Around the corner and down a hall is the entrance to the church, which forms one side of the seemingly square structure.

I was very afraid that I would inevitably do something to offend the monks. Their goal is to welcome all as they would welcome Christ, and I knew I was welcomed here—yet they live by a strict code, with which I was largely unfamiliar (aside from my reading Kathleen Norris). They must often experience a tension between their Benedictine way and their ignorant guests.

Dom Nicholas showed me the bathroom down the hall, still in an earnest whisper, charging me to remember to leave the rubber shower mat out to dry on the edge of the tub, rather than on the heater where it would melt. He graciously brought me three small towels since my own was dirty, and asked several times to make sure I had soap.

I joined them in the church for evening prayer at 8:30. There were three English women also staying here, on retreat, so the four of us sat in the first row. Dom Nicholas told me where I would find the prayer book, the order of worship, on the table against the wall on the right hand side. But I didn’t see it, so the Abbot himself came down in the silence before the service started to get it for me, opening it to the right page.

The prayers were comforting, Psalms read responsively, the left side leading with the three brothers who were sitting there. We women followed Dom Nicholas and Andrew, and a visiting nun here at the Abbey on holiday, who sat on the right of the raised platform, facing the brothers at the other end. The readings were almost chanted, in a strong monotone that seemed to heighten their English accents. There were a few melodies, led by Father Luke with no accompaniment. We sang a simple hymn as the day closed and the sky darkened, and then the monks filed out, raising the hoods of their robes.

I felt as though I had entered the silence.

Lyme (disease, not Regis)

2006-03-29T12:50:00.000-05:00

Chronic fatigue has been wreaking havoc with my life of late.

The great news (oddly fantastic, I'll admit) is that this appears to be Lyme disease, which is treatable. It all started a year after I began backpacking. I never knew I was bitten by a tick, but turns out they're often the size of poppyseeds, so you don't notice them. The tests for Lyme are unreliable and the disease is incredibly good at masquerading as something else, or hiding completely.

I'm so glad I didn't accept my family doctor's "It will probably always be a mystery why you feel bad." Turns out, anyone who's been diagnosed with chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia should find a specialist who knows how to test for Lyme. (Even my infectious disease specialist didn't catch it; if they don't talk to you about CD-57 counts, they may not know what they're talking about.)

In a few months, with antibiotics, there's a very good chance my symptoms will improve. I can't tell you how thankful I am. I'm overwhelmed to think healing is possible.

On plumbers and book proposals

2006-03-29T12:25:00.000-05:00

I've been woefully absent here lately, and missing the writing and blogging very much.

I woke up this morning for the first time in three weeks without a deadline hanging over my head. It was the best feeling in the world -- this little gap to squeeze in some of the things I love. I'm incredibly thankful for the work, so I'm not complaining. As a freelancer, it's a gift to be busy.

I'm finding that I need a lot of quiet in order to write -- or, in order to write books. Articles aren't really a problem. But, for this project, I have to be able to get into a soul-quiet space somehow, with permission to ramble and explore. Which is impossible when the heater is broken and your roommate discovers a leak in her bathroom and the person you need to interview for a piece just refuses to return your calls and your deadline is tomorrow.

And then there's the fatigue thing. On days I've not been able to work, I've been on the couch worrying about the deadlines I'm pushing back. On the days I get back at it, I work late and struggle to catch up and often find myself working weekends because I just can't get everything done any other way. I feel like I'm running constantly -- in slow motion, everyone still moving so much faster than I am.

I got feedback from my agent on the book proposal. It's nearly ready to go, just a few small tweaks and she will be Fed-exing it to acquisition editors. I've been dying to work on it. So, that's my lofty goal for this afternoon. Right after I meet the plumber. And set up interviews for another article.

Here's to more energy and more quiet, both of which I hope are right around the corner.

Isn't she lovely?

2006-03-24T18:13:00.000-05:00

My newest little niece made her grand entry into the world last night at 10:41 pm. Isabela Patrice -- Isa for short. Or Isa-belissa. We are all smitten.

Not 18 hours old and she has mastered the art of the Very Big Yawn. (That actually is a yawn and not a scream.) So sweet!

Pics from Steventon hike

2006-03-16T10:56:00.000-05:00

Here's a series of pics that go along with the article I posted yesterday.

St. Nicholas church in Steventon -- where Jane's father was rector. The yew tree to the left is where they used to hide the church key. It was such a gorgeous day...

Can you spot the copse of trees? ;-)

The lazy cows. Anyone know what kind they are?

A typical stile...

Here's one example of a trail marker. This one was pretty tricky--it was hidden behind trees, and I was coming from the opposite direction.

Lovely Ashe House (now a private home), where Jane's friend and mentor Anne Lefroy lived.

The quiet lane Ashe House is on.

Ashe churchyard

One of the Lefroy graves--I think this may be Anne's.

I loved this guy!

Summer wheat--and help "aiming left"

Deane manor house where Jane's friends the Harwoods lived. Jane attended dances here.

Inside Steventon church

A detail of some of the amazing painting on the church walls.

Me in the archway of St. Nicholas (also the pic I'm using for the blog bio)

Phil & Sue Howe of Hidden Britain Tours. They rescued me in Deane and made sure I got into the Steventon church. For anyone out there who doesn't feel like trekking through the countryside, they've recently set up a tour highlighting all the Austen sites in Hampshire. I highly recommend them!

Walking with Jane

2006-03-15T12:10:00.000-05:00

Walking the fields around Steventon alone was one of the best and craziest things I did on this trip. I'm working on pulling a few travel articles out of the book project (with the help of Amanda Castleman, the instructor in an online travel writing class I'm taking). Here's the first--thought you might enjoy seeing it. This material will make it into the book, in slightly different format.

Jane Austen was nothing if not a great walker—much like Lizzie Bennet in her perennially best-selling Pride & Prejudice. I’m afraid I have less claim to the title. Following Austen, I found myself alone and nearly lost in the middle of a Hampshire wheat field on a sunny day in mid-July.

My friend Jane dropped me off at St. Nicholas church in Steventon at 11:00, leaving me four hours of solitude in the middle of Austen country. I wanted to go inside the church, find the site of the rectory, and walk through the fields to her friend Anne Lefroy’s house. But for ten minutes, I just sat on a bench in the churchyard, contemplating my good fortune. Bugs and birds were active, but everything else was wonderfully quiet.

Austen spent the first 25 years of her life in this little village. Houses, thatched cottages—some of which were here in Jane’s day—and a town meeting hall line the main street. Fields and farms fill the surrounding hills.

The community still speaks directly to the quiet country life Austen captured in her books. The land—largely free of development—must look at least something like it did when she was growing up. Here she threw rousing family theatricals in the barn with her brothers. She rolled down the hill at the back of the rectory, like Catherine in Northanger Abbey. She picked up the books her father used to teach the boys at the school run out of the family home. And, of course, she started writing.

Jane’s father was rector at St. Nicholas, a simple Norman structure from the 1200’s, still occasionally in use today. We found it by following signs, turning left on the one significant cross-street in town. The yew tree where they used to hide the church key still stands guard, towering over an assembly of mostly kept-up graves. Jane’s brother James and his two wives are buried here, along with some of the Digweed family who lived in the manor house when Jane was a girl.

I was unable to get into the church despite pushing and turning the heavy door handles, so I set off through the fields. I had a mobile phone, a power bar and a guidebook with detailed directions. “Walk over the field towards the copse,” it said. What is a copse? I thought. I knew then that I could be in trouble.

I’ve done a good bit of backpacking in the States, but I have never been the one responsible for reading the map. Little good that would have done me either, as these trusty instructions left out distances altogether.

“Cross the railway,” it said, neglecting to mention the 50 yards of weeds and brambles. “Keep the pines close on your right”—this in a veritable forest. I discovered that in England the pathmarkers are relatively small (sometimes no more than a 3”x3” sign on a fence post) and if there are bigger signs, they are made of wood, making them incredibly difficult to see.

Stiles—for clambering over fences—are often a few pieces of board stuck at funny angles with just enough support to enable a foothold. Paths run through private property, occasionally through fields of livestock. Lazy cows followed me with their glassy eyes. At one point, a pony with a red leather fringe tied around his head (to keep the flies off?) tramped after me along his fence. The whole time he was goofily eyeing my banana.

After two hours of fumbling to find the right stiles and pine trees, an incredibly-pleased-with-myself me walked up a quiet road to the Lefroy home. Ashe House is a simple Georgian structure, brick with a classical row of windows along the front and a fanlight above the door. Anne Lefroy was one of Jane’s closest friends, like a mentor to her. It’s here that Jane met Anne’s nephew Tom, her first love. They danced and Jane flirted. Tom was quickly called back to Ireland by his family to marry someone of appropriately large fortune, leaving poor Jane behind.

Just down the lane is Ashe church. It was rebuilt in 1877, but the yard holds the Lefroy graves. I couldn’t tell which of the moss-covered structures belonged to Anne, who was killed in a riding accident on Jane’s 29th birthday. Jane wrote a poem in her memory, speaking of her “solid Worth” and “captivating Grace.” Persuasion’s Lady Russell may have been based partly on Anne Lefroy, but after reading the poem, it’s clear this fictional character could never have rivaled the “genuine warmth of heart without pretence” of Jane’s dear friend.

I set off again, this time for the village of Deane, where the Harwoods threw dances in the manor house. Jane’s father and brother James were both rector here at one point. The guide says, “Walk ahead over a large field aiming for the left-hand corner of a strip of woodland.” Had the guidebook author been present I could have strangled her. Aim left?? Aim left through a large field?, I thought. But when I crossed a stile under the trees, I found a field full of high summer wheat, with a green walkingpath cut through the middle, aiming for the left corner.

I walked into the field and stopped in the sun. I don’t think these are the paths Jane walked, of course. But I imagine this may be how she felt walking them—gloriously alone, surrounded by the heat and health of nature, independent for a few precious moments, with friends waiting at the other end. I’m glad I ventured out. I’m glad I didn’t have a tour guide. And somehow, I feel closer to Jane.

Pics of Bath

2006-03-14T11:46:00.000-05:00

I've posted pictures of Bath on the Squidoo lens. I'm not sure I like the way the Flickr system works--you have to make your pictures public, or viewable by everyone who goes to the Flickr site, in order to put them on your lens. Anyway, I may post the rest of them here.

In other news, I finished editing the proposal. Crack open the Girl Scout cookies! Hoping that will be on its way to publishers in the near future. (It's very cool and a tiny bit scary, actually, that this could become a real book. I can remember when my first book came out, for the first week or so I panicked, thinking that I didn't want anyone at all to read it. I'm pretty sure that will happen this time, too.)

And in completely unrelated news, there seems to be a family of mice in my house. I can't abide the thought of killing them, but they seem very uninterested in the sweet humane catch-and-release traps with peanut butter inside. Last night one scooted right around the trap to go behind the TV when I was sitting RIGHT THERE painting my nails. The nerve! On Saturday, my roommate and I were talking and watching BraveHeart (who can resist Mel Gibson in a kilt?) when one got stuck in a glue trap. This is when our newfound animal rights activism kicked in. It was so terribly inhumane to listen to him squealing and struggling to get free. To think, you're just supposed to let them struggle there until they die of a heart attack?? Impossible. We started to root for the little guy after about two seconds. We took the trap outside and doused him in olive oil, and he jumped away leaving little oily footprints behind.

Squidooooooo!

2006-03-10T16:21:00.000-05:00

I've launched a new Squidoo lens about Following Austen. It's in rough form right now, but check it out! (Because if you go look at it, it will drive my rankings up, and then MORE people will look at it, and come to the blog. ;-)

I'll be posting pictures there from the trip, and will let you know when they're up. I've not been able to get their Flickr module to work yet, though it sounds very cool.

And now back to the matter at hand...

2006-03-10T16:10:00.000-05:00

It's been quiet here over the last week. Last week I was so focused on getting the first section of the book edited for the proposal that I put everything else on hold, and this week I was playing catch-up (rather unsuccessfully).

But as you know, this book is not really about Jack. It's about Jane. And me.

Things went up on the blog in first-draft form, and rather segregated. First stuff about Jane, then about me, then the Jack story. In the book, they'll be much more closely tied together.

I've got the first section edited to include in the proposal (roughly 17,000 words!) and I'm hoping to be able to put it up here as a short little e-book for anyone who would like to read it. And for anyone who's just stumbled upon the blog and would like to read something that's actually formatted for reading rather than having to page backward through months' worth of blog entries.

People have emailed me from time to time to say 'I can't wait to find out what happens with you and Jack!' I have to say, I'm sorry, but... prepare to wait.

Because where we are in the story, I'm headed off for the Hampshire countryside, for the monastery. (I think of all the places I went on the trip, I miss this most. If I could go anywhere right now, I would go to Alton Abbey. I would like to pray with the monks, and sit in the rose garden.)

If that seems difficult, you can imagine how I felt on the trip--headed off for three weeks with a terrible mixture of certainty and uncertainty. But this is the drama of ordinary life.

So, next week, hoping to start posting again, continuing the journey in Hampshire.

Thanks for reading!

36: Leaving

2006-03-01T11:56:00.000-05:00

When it came time to actually say goodbye, I left Jack and Simon on a little overgrown road outside of Oxford, in front of the place they would both be staying that night before heading off the next day. Simon kissed me warmly on the cheek and gave me a close hug, talking about how wonderful the week was, and how we would definitely have to get together when we got home, and how I must meet his fiancee. And then he made himself scarce—getting his luggage out of the cab, I think—and I turned and saw Jack leaning over to kiss me on the cheek.

His bending down to meet me was so rare for this week of falling into something like love, it startled me, in the best way. We had barely touched all week. I remember him putting his hand on my back once on Saturday, making sure I made it across the street, and our legs touching briefly by accident as we sat listening to Baroque music in the corner of candlelit Exeter College chapel. But that’s it.

So for a moment I felt lost in him, in this simple closeness. I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his neck and kissed him just there, wherever my lips happened to be, awkwardly and spontaneously. My heart was so full. My tongue was stulted as usual. I couldn’t say even half of what I’d said to Simon in genuine friendship. Jack didn’t do much better. He told me we’d get together when I got home, and as I walked away, called out something about not working too hard.

There is one particular scene in Pride and Prejudice that may be my favorite. I sometimes have to go back and watch it again, even though nothing really happens. Elizabeth is at the piano, helping Georgiana, and Darcy—Colin Firth—just gazes at her for a moment, with complete adoration. That’s it. One moment—the best possible look on his face. I never thought to be looked at that way. I mean, this is the movies after all, and a Jane Austen movie at that. How many guys just sit back and give girls adoring glances like they are wholly entranced—in a way that’s more than just wanting to get her into bed?

But when I left Jack he had the best look in his eyes--like he couldn’t smile enough, so it was coming out everywhere else. But it was more than happiness. For those few moments I was adored. It was so strong as to feel tangible, and sent me off with the confidence of something I didn’t dare put into words.

35: Saturday

2006-02-28T14:38:00.000-05:00

When you deal with regular insomnia and fatigue you reach a point at which your sleeping and waking self are very much alike—the main differences being that when you are “sleeping” your eyes are closed and when you are “awake” you are ever so slightly more coherent. Such was my state of being on Saturday morning. On these horrible days, I have trouble eating anything and a flight of stairs can seem insurmountable. I find myself in a kind of stupor where time seems to act out of character—I may be doing nothing but daydreaming, or looking at a book without actually comprehending words, or shutting my eyes to pretend to rest, and hours pass in the space of what should be fifteen minutes.

Jack’s small words that morning were incredibly attentive and kind. He wished me good morning—such a small thing—more than once with so much energy and attention, with such a kind look, if you saw it I think you would forgive me for feeling it to be significant. There is a way couples talk to each other, and Jack had started talking to me, looking at me, that particular way. To be so far at the end of myself and to be met with this warmth of affection made me feel warm and loved.

But I knew (and felt rather spitefully) the insecurity of all the looks and all the good-mornings-es. There was still the girl in Georgia. We were still officially just hanging out, whatever the hell that meant. I knew there was nothing solid to back up all of these small goodnesses and so I did not always reply in kind. I’m afraid at times I gave him little meannesses in return. I was generally guarded, attempting to be stalwart Eleanor and not betray the depth of my feelings. At one point, he looked at me with warmth, and all I could say in my exhausted stupor was how bad my allergies were. We sat drinking tea at a patisserie on our way downtown to meet Simon for lunch, and I told him he and my roommate would probably have a lot in common, in a teasing way that could have implied that I’d like to set them up. I was almost daring him to say something, to tell me with words what his actions and looks had been saying all week. He was not entirely functional that day either, but he didn’t slip. He said nothing substantial, nothing to give me false hope.

When we were alone close to St. Mary’s, he looked at me and said, “Well, it’s been great hanging out with you this week.” And I thought, so that’s it. And then said, with far less warmth than I felt, and with a chilled heart, “Yeah, it’s been great.”

34: St. Aldates

2006-02-27T16:08:00.000-05:00

There is a woman who walks St. Aldates and the Folly Bridge at night. Tonight was the second time I saw her. She mumbles and shuffles, rather well dressed for someone who may be crazy, in a matching long skirt and blouse. She works her hands together and looks at the ground and sort of hunches along. I wanted to know what she was talking about, and if anyone ever listens to her. I wonder, does she have children, and do they know this is how she spends her evenings—does she have friends?

Our loud group passed her on the way to the Head of the River pub, after our farewell banquet in Wadham College’s four-hundred-year-old dining hall. I was in my favorite red Ann Taylor dress. It’s sleeveless and cut in to bare all of my shoulders, and falls to mid-calf, grazing my minimal curves. I got to see that instant look of the best kind of surprise on Jack’s face when I walked out on the lawn in it.

As we walked—together in the crowd, as always—to dinner, he said, “We should get pictures together,” so there we are in my album, looking couplish, standing on the manicured lawn of the Wadham quad.

I laughed that night like I hadn’t laughed in ages—healing laughter. Stacey got a Long Island Iced Tea and they doubled the alcohol for her. The rest of us didn’t need much motivation; our hearts were limber.

I spent an hour that afternoon back at the spot by the river, laying in the sun, off to the side a bit because there was a group of college girls right where I wanted to be. I drifted in and out of sleep, afraid that I could actually sleep soundly there in the middle of the afternoon, and not wake up until the evening sky was grey and I had missed everything. When you live like this—awake and exhausted almost all the time, you can never tell when sleep will come. You sort of have to obey it whenever it wants to make an appearance, but here I was denying it again. I would pay for it later, as the unending laughter had me fighting off dry heaves, which were making regular appearances every morning now.

In England they shut down all of the pubs at 11:00 p.m. for some reason, as the result some horrible law. When they kicked us out we split up into smaller groups and wandered slowly back up through town, passing Christ Church again, curtains blowing by an open pane, past lines of people on Cornmarket waiting for the midnight release of the new Harry Potter book, up St. Giles, always the quiet heaviness of the Oxford college buildings playing the counterpoint to our lightness. I walked next to Jack, close and connected somehow in spite of the fact that we didn’t touch—him with his arms crossed, me occasionally letting my hand hang free by my side. We didn’t stop laughing—nor I trying to conceal the occasional dry heaves—until we got back to Wycliffe, and then with the sad realization that this was the end of our party.

Tomorrow we would go our separate ways. Simon would go back home to a job he wanted to leave, Paul to a busy practice, Jesse to Wales to check out a graduate program, Stacey to work with Muslim youth in northern England, Jack to Jordan for research for his masters degree, me to a quiet Benedictine monastery in Hampshire, near Jane’s home. I had no idea what to expect, but I longed for the peace of the monks.

33: Punting

2006-02-22T11:57:00.000-05:00

Thursday afternoon I went punting with a huge group from Wycliffe. Jesse gave up his excellent spot in a boat so that five of us girls could go together. We hung out in the gorgeous sun eating strawberries (or straw-bries if you’re going to say it the British way) and cream, each of us taking turns to try to not tip the boat over, and managing to go further than anyone else. It was all lovely.

Stacey wanted to know how long Jack and I had been dating, and kept going on about our obvious connection, and how great that God would bring us together like this. I tried to change the subject, to give her a quick, “We just met, actually, and we’re just hanging out.” But she was resolute. So I endured (and not entirely without enjoying them) a series of wouldn’t-it-be-wonderfuls and speculations on her part about what exactly God was doing and how everything would work out amazingly.

We ran back and took showers and rushed to a little Italian place to meet the gang for dinner. Jack saved me a seat. And that seemed to be the end of our trying to avoid each other.

Hold it gently...

2006-02-20T10:58:00.000-05:00

I feel compelled to say something about the nature of blogging and what's been happening here. I began to write, thinking I had something that might be publishable and might have legs. It's hard for me to tell until I get a good bit of writing done, and this one proved stronger the further I got into it. Then I thought I would post it online, to help generate an audience for it and help find a publisher or create enough enthusiasm to sustain a self-published title. The response has been positive and not so small as to be insignificant. (Actually, the numbers look good.)

What has surprised me is how deeply personal it's all become. I suppose that shouldn't have been a surprise--it's a memoir, after all, including a story about something like falling in love. It's about romance in a surprisingly Austen-esque sort of fashion, because this relationship grew quietly, largely out of conversation and character.

So I've been sharing some of those intimate conversations and thoughts, because that is the stuff this was made of. I think good books--and good blogs--have to be personal. But somehow, the blog feels much more personal, makes me feel more vulnerable.

There are a few classes of readers: my dear friends, those who don't know me at all, and those I know but would never share this amount of detail with. The first two don't bother me. My friends will love me no matter what, and those I don't know are safe at a distance. It's the third group that has been giving me occasional panic attacks.

I hope you'll know that this is my heart, and hold it gently.

About the title...

2006-02-20T10:50:00.000-05:00

One of the things my agent wanted to tweak was the title, Following Austen, which I happen to love. Actually, what I really love is the subtitle: Notes on an Ordinary Life--because that's what this book is really about. Nothing happens and so much happens, all at the same time. It is sort of an anti-Frey memoir (for those who have been following the scandal with James Frey's Million Little Pieces) in that it's about the smallness of what happens. There's no point in attempting to create big drama because it's all about the quiet drama of everyday life.

Anyway, Beth thinks the title may be too impersonal. And she may be right. So, I've been playing around with other ideas, and came up with...

Me and Jane: One girl's journey following Jane Austen's life through England in search of love, adventure, and faith

I think the subtitle is far too long. Eeesh. Send along any thoughts you have.

32: Baroque candlelight

2006-02-20T10:49:00.000-05:00

Somehow I ended up in Jack’s group for dinner, sitting next to him, and by the end of the meal, after trading a few small sharpish sort of comments and a lot of laughter, we were friends.

Four of us decided on a whim to go to a rather expensive Baroque candlelight concert at Exeter College Chapel. The chapel dates from the 1300’s—small and simple on the outside, with a traditional steeple at one end. Inside, there are icons painted around the bottom of the walls with what looks like real gold. From about eight feet up the walls are gorgeous stained glass, images of biblical stories clear to the top. We sat listening to the cello and harpsichord, the readings from Shakespeare (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments…”) and Queen Elizabeth (“I have the heart and stomach of a king…”), trying to sort out which stories were which in the glass.

We got ice cream and stood on the bridge over the Isis, and I thought I might pass out from exhaustion.

As we walked back, I said to Jack (the others had not been part of our conversation for a while), “I’m not sure exactly what I said to you this morning, and I’m even less sure about what you heard.” He laughed a little. I was determined to say my piece, “I just want to make sure I didn’t communicate that I’m not interested, because I am.”

“I appreciate that,” he said. And quietly, “No, I just heard you say that, you know, you were feeling emotional and needed some space.”

“Good.”

“You know, it’s like I said,” he continued, “This other thing just started, and I didn’t expect to meet someone—especially someone I had so much in common with. I’m sure you weren’t expecting to meet anyone either.”

“No, I wasn’t,” I lied through my teeth. What’s a girl to do?

Back in the Wycliffe lobby, I practically whispered, “So then, I’m like, are we just hanging out or what? And I know I don’t need an answer to that question now.”

But Jack answered me anyway. “Yeah, we should view it that way, and not feel like we need to sit together in lectures all the time or spend all our time together. You know, I just don’t know what God’s going to do with this.”

And I thought yes, in some sense that’s true, but in some way doesn’t it just come down to what Jack wants?

We sat in the common room with Simon and laughed until about midnight, when I headed upstairs. I felt oddly light and clear knowing that, officially, there was nothing going on. Like somehow I could just relax and enjoy whatever it was we had, without putting expectations on it.

31: Catastrophe

2006-02-20T10:46:00.000-05:00

I made the decision to talk to Jack. I was looking for reassurance. I wanted him to know that I was a mess, temporarily, but I was really okay. I had the sense that perhaps this was a mistake, but when I am overwhelmingly tired and emotional, and begin to feel that something must be done, I am compelled to do it and have a hard time thinking it through.

I waited on the lawn for him to finish breakfast, my eyes still streaming as I sat on a green plastic chair under a tent and tried not to make eye contact with anyone, shakily drinking my cappucino. Who knows what I looked like. As I walked through Wycliffe, people sort of stared like there was something funny about me. For myself, I felt like I hadn’t entirely made it into the real world that day, and I couldn’t help it, and couldn’t do anything about what other people thought about it.

Who knows what Jack was expecting. Certainly not me in the state he found me in. I told him that the last couple days had been intense, that I wasn’t sleeping well, that I was feeling emotional and couldn’t process things, that if I laid low today that was why.

He said, “Wow, I don’t really know what to do with that.”

I laughed through tears, “Yeah, most guys don’t.”

And as I began to sense that assurance would not come, he said, “I’m glad you said something, because I’ve been thinking, we need to make sure we’re getting everything we’re supposed to out of this week, meeting everyone we’re supposed to meet. It probably would be good if we didn’t spend so much time together.”

Buck up little camper, I thought. Of course, I agreed, it would be good to not spend so much time together, not sit together all the time, take a step back. But inside I felt the full weight of the blow. I thought I had given him reason to think I was a bit crazy. And I was.

I imagined him discussing this with the other guys, all of them wondering at my instability, and longed to hang out with a girlfriend who could help me put it all right again, at least in my head.

I got a sandwich from down the street and ate lunch by myself, on the library steps. I made plans to go to dinner with someone else and felt skittish and insecure all afternoon.

30: Croissants

2006-02-15T19:03:00.000-05:00

Wednesday morning I sat looking out the window of a patisserie, streaming and sniffling, trying to eat a chocolate croissant.

I woke to the darkness of 3:30 a.m., after just three or three and a half hours of sleep. I lay for hours in the quiet of the growing gray light coming in through the window, listening to the birds, wondering at everything that had happened—the way Jack and I fit, the perfection of it all—turning things over and around in my mind. I was in awe at the certainty of it, having never felt so strongly about someone in so short a period of time, for reasons which seemed incredibly sound. I wanted to go to breakfast alone, to not have to exert the energy to talk to strangers—to talk to anyone.

The patisserie is on a small, quiet street full of restaurants, a pub, a sandwich place, a florist. There is a full window along the front, with a bar alongside. By 7:30, when I sat down with everything—cranberry juice, cappucino, water, and 2 chocolate croissants—I began to sense just how much trouble I was in. I was devastatingly tired. My brain couldn’t quite sort things out.

I started to cry and couldn’t stop—not a loud, shaking, full-on cry, but a quiet stream, as though God had turned the faucet on low. I was afraid of the surety I felt. I thought that I could never have imagined Jack so well. I was overwhelmingly grateful. And I was positive that I would never be able to sort out my emotions through so much exhaustion. So I let myself cry, and tried not to worry about what the owner or the lady at the table nearby would think. I was not entirely functional.

29: Cubans

2006-02-14T11:53:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday evening, my stinky feet and I put on our flip-flops and sweat pants and went out on the side lawn to smoke Cubans with Jack and Paul. We sat in the wet grass, the evening still glowing with the luminescent late blue hour, the hour of dusk that many believe to be holy. (I am among them.) As the sky lost its glow we were lit by nothing but the lights from the windows of Wycliffe Hall. Jack and I were smoking, and I was drinking orange juice from a can, discovering that orange juice and cigars are a fairly horrible combination. Paul, raised in a good strict Assemblies of God home, chose to abstain. “Smoke a cigar and go to hell? No, I don’t think so,” he laughed.

We talked about how I had only just discovered that I grew up with a view of the world where there were good people (Christians) and bad people (everyone else). I finally realized that I had been looking down at the world all these years, and saw that we are all loved the same, and all flawed the same—all of us equal before God. That God could be just as present at a party where guys were smoking joints in the driveway as he was at my Bible study—present in a different way, but still present and reaching. When you see the world that way, anyplace can be holy.

Jack believes that Jesus at a party would have stood out, would have obviously been different. Paul and I think He would have been incredibly comfortable, would have made other people comfortable because He loved them.

Paul’s brother was an alcoholic, until one day Jesus miraculously healed him. Paul kept trying to talk him into getting treatment, and his brother tried from time to time, but it didn’t stick, and he kept saying he knew that God would just heal him, and one day He did, and he hasn’t had a drink since. Before his brother had been healed, he was walking down the sidewalk and a woman handed him a tract about Christianity. And he told Paul he knew that she wasn’t a Christian—obviously—because she was wearing pants. All of us, to some degree or other (and to our regret), inherited this pattern of horrible injustice to the grace of God.

I felt free to say what I really think to Jack, free to disagree with him, because he is genuinely interested in what I think. He hears me out not for the purpose of belittling me, but to better understand me, and maybe even adjust his own thinking. I haven’t always felt that way with the men in my life.

About 11:15, when Jack and I were light-headed from smoking, and our seats were wet, we headed in and called it a night. I fairly floated up the stairs. It’s not just any guy, after all, who could sustain such an earnest conversation about God’s grace.

28: B-oh, oh, oh

2006-02-13T10:46:00.000-05:00

The smells on this trip were all wrong. When I first opened my suitcase there was a printed note saying the TSA had inspected my bag and everything might not have been put back in the right place. It smelled horrible, like one of the paint compounds I would smell in my dad’s hobby room where he works on his airplane models. And I thought, great, they’ve used some kind of chemical in my bag to detect traces of bombs and now all my clothes smell. But it turned out to be my Professional Firma Nail Extra Strength Base and Top Coat (a manicure kit is a must) which had leaked into its small plastic zippered bag and somehow managed to infect all of my clothes. Ugh.

My underwear were in an old ditty bag from my backpacking days, which infused them with the rather bad and strong smell of cheap plastic. In a moment of inspiration, wondering at my own excessive preparedness, I pulled out dryer sheets from my laundry supplies and stuffed one into my ditty bag and spread a few throughout my clothes. But I began to sicken at the smell of the dryer sheets, spicy and overwrought, which still didn’t cover the bad-rubber-chemical smells my clothes had acquired.

And then there was my lovely new green slip-on tennis shoes. I knew they might be a problem because they make my feet hot, and sure enough, by Tuesday evening, a foul case of foot odor was brewing. I’m not typically the foot odor type. Seriously. But I was starting to feel like the odor wafting up from the region of my ankles surrounded me in a pungent Linus-like cloud.

I felt like I was walking around with a mixture of cheap rubber, dryer-sheets, hint of “Firma Nail” and strong dose of foot odor. Very attractive, no doubt.

27: Tourists

2006-02-10T12:53:00.000-05:00

By lunch I felt nearly normal. During a break, Jack asked if I wanted to go to one of the museums with him in the afternoon. I said, “Actually, I thought I would wander around like a tourist and take pictures. Want to go?” And he said yes.

We ended up at—of all places—Starbucks. (They had air conditioning.) We made our way slowly through town—first Trinity College, then the Bodleian, and then (stopping en route to get Cubans), our real destination, Magdalen College where Lewis taught, which the guidebook called “perhaps the most typical and beautiful Oxford college.”

It’s gorgeous, and immediately became one of my favorite places. Bits of it have been used in the Harry Potter films, I think. It took us a while to figure out the lay of the land. We wandered into one of the 15th-century cloisters, with detailed fret work in the arch ways and wonderful gargoyles, with a view of the bell tower just beyond where the college choir sings every May Day at 6 a.m. Jack was taking my picture in one of the arches when a young Asian guy—a tourist—offered to take our picture together and pronounced it “beautiful.” So that was it—the first, somewhat awkward record of a friendship.

We wandered out from the cloisters into an expanse of open sun and manicured lawn, the imposing New Building—“new” being relative, as it’s actually from the 1730’s—directly ahead of us, and on the right, a ways off, a lovely flower garden bordering the Cherwell, and a little bridge over the river leading to Addison’s Walk. The walk is about a mile round, often by the river, through a bit of wilderness where they sometimes graze the college flock of deer. It’s here where Lewis, Tolkein, and Dyson walked, talking of Christianity, just before Lewis converted.

We hung out on the bridge for a while, looking at the flowers, watching the water birds. Jack took a picture of me on the bridge, and I couldn’t stop smiling—as though an infectious grin is my natural state, when really I’m much more of an Eeyore. I generally hate pictures. They often manage to catch my weak chin at just the wrong angle so it looks like I have no chin at all. My new theory is that one should not necessarily strive to be beautiful. It’s something to just be good looking enough, and if you really smile in pictures and forget to worry about what you look like they turn out surprisingly well.

So we ended up at Starbucks because we couldn’t find an ice cream place and I needed to sit down and consume some calories (and then there was the air conditioning thing). We had started talking as we walked into town and for the nearly four hours we were together we just talked. I’m not sure that these kinds of conversations can be accurately recreated (or, perhaps, that I am capable of recreating them). They are about small things that take on great importance because all of a sudden this other person has become the most important person in your life, at least for today, and maybe for tomorrow, and—if you’re both lucky—maybe for a long time after that.

On the way into town, we talked about my chronic fatigue and how Jack had struggled with it at one point, in the middle of a career change. I was surprised and relieved to find someone who understands what a lost day feels like, who doesn’t think I’m making this up.

Over our frappucinos, Jack said somewhat awkwardly, “Since you write about singles stuff, I should tell you, I, um . . . I actually just started kind of seeing someone in Georgia. Not that I’m not enjoying hanging out, but I wasn’t expecting to meet someone, since this other thing just started.”

My calm exterior: “Oh—well . . . I really appreciate your telling me. That means a lot.” I then proceeded to say something awkwardly about my friend who had flown up from South Carolina for dinner, as if to prove that I had relationship ties in the south as well.

I was actually thinking, What was I thinking? Argh. And so what if there’s a girl in Georgia? I’m here now and you like me, right?

Apparently they just started going out. It’s not really defined yet, he doesn’t know what’s going to happen with it, but he wanted me to know.

And then we talked about things that can take months to get to in the course of everyday dating.

Marriage: Jack said, “I’m really happy now being single. I’m not sure I want to get married. I mean, when I think about my future, I want to be married, but I’m not sure I’m ready for it now.” And I said, “I know what you mean. I want to get married and have a family, but whenever marriage becomes a possibility, I sort of panic, and think, I have such a great life…”

Children: Jack said he wasn’t sure he wanted kids. And I said I wanted a family, but that being a mother could never be my sole identity, I would probably always work at least parttime, and that it doesn’t have to entirely consume your life. And he said, “Yeah, but it’s a commitment, and if you have kids you have to make a commitment to them.”

The thing about me is that I’m occasionally desperate to be married. I’d been sitting on the loveseat in my sunroom from time to time for months praying for a husband—a guy who would adore me. I want children of my own. And I’m very aware of the fact that if those two things are going to happen, well, times-a-wastin’. It’s not that the things I told Jack weren’t true, it’s just that I presented them in what seemed the best possible light.

And in response to his “I’m not sure I want to be married” thing, an alarm went off in my head: abandon ship! There is a certain class of Christian single guys that my friend Kris dubbed Stinky Time Wasters. They don’t know what they want. But they like hanging out with you. So for months and sometimes years they keep asking you out, and making out with you, and making you believe they love you, and then they say something like, “I’ve never seen us together long-term” and you are left with years worth of the shitty shards of a relationship that should never have been allowed to consume your life.

All of us girls are on guard for relationships like that. But this is tricky, you know, because sometimes a guy has to hang out with you a bit before he realizes what he really wants. So I duly noted this objection in the back of my head, and decided to hang out with Jack, even if it was just for a week, because we were both in Oxford and he was definitely into me.

We wandered through Christ Church Meadow for a while, all the way down to the Isis and back, talking about all the stuff of life we had in common. He asked me about what I wanted or enjoyed, and I went on about renting a villa in Italy and inviting my friends, wanting to be fluent in Spanish and French and Italian, wanting to learn Greek and Hebrew and understand the cultural and historical setting of Jesus, and write about that, wanting to figure out how to really help the poor. He understood everything. “There are so many things I want to do, I’m afraid life won’t be long enough,” I said. And he replied, “You don’t have to do everything now.”

26: Gatorade

2006-02-09T09:04:00.000-05:00

I woke up at 5:15 or 5:30 on Tuesday morning. It is another symptom of whatever I have (which I hate to think of as chronic fatigue) that I often wake up after five hours of sleep as though my terribly hard-working, Dickensian inner self has decided it is time to make the gruel. Meanwhile, my body is non-functioning. On this particular night, I got about four hours of sleep. I lay in bed for a while, feeling like I desperately needed food (it is amazing how many calories one needs when one is not sleeping much) and decided that Gatorade would make me feel better. So I made a bunch—probably 20 ounces—drank most of it, and promptly threw up.

I skipped devotions to try to eat something, and when Paul walked through the breakfast room he found me perched nautiously on the edge of a chair, taking tiny bites of meusli that I had put hot water on, because they said it was oatmeal. I didn’t think I could find anything that tasted better, so I got down as much as I could, with some orange juice and tea.

My prayers are often very simple. My prayer this morning went something like, “Oh, God, I can’t be like this today. Please make me better. Please, please, make me better.”

25: Fire

2006-02-09T09:03:00.000-05:00

We walked back and went with a group to dinner at a little French crepe place. Sara said to Jack, “Do you want to sit across from your wife?” and we laughed and I said, “Oh, we just met yesterday.”

One of the guys—one of my guys that I would spend the week hanging out with—Paul, is a doctor. A plumber, he says. A proctologist. One of our dinner-mates, Greg, upon realizing he had the captive audience of a proctologist, launched into a long and detailed story involving kidney stones, shunts, catheters, an intern, and no anesthetic. I needed sleep. My exhaustion hit me full force when I sat down. The noise of the conversation was too much for me. The shunts were too much for me. I alternately cringed quietly and put forth a great deal of effort to be pleasant to what I’m sure was little effect.

After dinner the group headed into town to walk around and hang out, and I begged off to try to get more sleep and maybe feel better tomorrow. I felt a bit fragile. And while I was frustrated to not be able to go with them, I felt full of all the goodness of the day.

I’ve not slept well for so long that I no longer really know how to fall asleep. My exhausted body doesn’t actually get sleepy anymore, perhaps because I’ve had to fight being tired so much to get through the days that my brain’s reaction to being worn out is to send adrenaline to stem the tide. So I lay in bed and alternately sink into sleep and jerk awake in what feels like panic. But mostly I lay in bed awake, thinking about things, waiting for sleeping pills to kick in.

The pills themselves are tricky. I don’t like that they have control over me, that they can make me do things I cannot do on my own. I hate taking them. Monday night, I took one, hoping it would be enough to guide me into a sleep I’d be able to sustain on my own. It didn’t work.

Sometimes when I have trouble sleeping I imagine that there are demons assigned to me, like Screwtape, poking my soul with a big, mean stick as I begin to drift off. They were active this evening, poking away, keeping me desperately awake.

Two sleeping pills generally make me sleep soundly until about 9:30 the next morning, and leave me with a general grogginess that takes sometimes a day or even two to shake. But at 12:30 a.m., I didn’t have a choice, so I popped another blue pill and felt myself being pulled lovingly into sleep’s warm depths. I had completely given in and the demons were quiet. I was beginning to think everything would be fine. And then the fire alarm went off.

I lay in bed hoping it was a joke, but when it continued, I grabbed my white hoodie and climbed down the iron spiral fire escape just outside my door.

The back lawn was full. I lurked in the back of the crowd, trying not to wake up all the way. But when I spotted Jack and Paul and Simon and Jesse I joined the fun—after all, it was 12:30 and we were in our pajamas. Jack touched my arm and said, “Nice stripes,” and I just wanted to curl up with him and be cozy.

For an hour it was like college. Paul kept getting calls on his cell phone from friends and kept saying, “I’m in England! Do you know what time it is here?” And as a group we decided that Jack should make reparations for something—the Scandinavians and their pillaging, I think—which was all terribly funny because by that point, it was around 1 a.m. and I had had two sleeping pills.

When they finally let us back in, I was too shy to find Jack and say goodnight. I saw him looking around, maybe for me, and thought, sheesh. I need a remedial class in dating. Or maybe just talking to boys.

24: Talking

2006-02-08T14:52:00.000-05:00

I was pinch-myself happy that afternoon sitting on the grass where the naked dons used to laze about.

“So what do you think you’ll do when you finish grad school?” I asked.

Jack hesitated a second. Everything about him was easy—slow and calm. “I’m not really sure,” he said. “I felt called to do this program, and I love it, but I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do when I’m done. I think it may have something to do with writing.”

We talked about my writing, and his brothers, and he said something about his grandmother calling him William. It was the second time I’d heard him refer to himself as William, and it was a bit like a warning flash in the middle of all this pleasantness. I had to say what I’d been debating.

“Does your family call you William?” I willed the words out.

“Yeah, how did you know that?”

“It’s just that you were talking about your family a couple times and I thought you said ‘William’…” I fumbled.

“Actually, everybody calls me William,” he said. My real name is Jack William—it’s a family name—but everybody calls me William. When I registered for the school here I gave them my full name and they started sending me stuff as Jack and I never corrected them. I like it, and I thought it would be kind of fun and it reminds me of Lewis, I guess, I don’t know.”

“Well the weird thing is”—sirens were going off in my head but it was far too late to stop—“I probably shouldn’t tell you this.”

“No, go ahead,” he said.

“Well, you kind of remind me—I mean you look a little bit like an old boss I had, and his name was William, and he was sort of, um, horrible. He lied a lot, or most of the time. I’m not sure if he knew when he was telling the truth. I ended up confronting him on some things, and he fired me without cause and lied about the whole thing to make it look like my fault. It was all really horrible.”

“Well, then, by all means,” he said in his gentle southern accent, “call me Jack.”

“I’ve dealt with people like that before,” he said. “Actually, there was one situation that I ended up having to confront a guy who was really high up, a guy we were working with—he was a general, actually, and the way it happened ended up being in a public forum, but I had to say something because he had to be called on it. I was really worried about it and I didn’t want to come off as arrogant, but it had to be done. Anyway, so, I’m not your boss, but I’ve confronted him.” And he laughed—not in a mean laughing-at-me way, but in an it’s-all-really-okay way. And his saying that made me relieved. Still a tiny bit creeped-out and skeptical, but relieved.

We talked about our common perfectionism, which he seemed to be a little further along at mastering, and about me trying to accept and really believe God’s grace. He told me about the orphan he loved in South Africa, and about how that’s when God’s grace really broke through for him. A life-changing experience of loving a little girl who didn’t want to be loved and didn’t deserve love, but Jack loved her anyway, wholeheartedly. And at that moment God said to him, “This is how I love you.” And that stuck.

We talked about how both of us have a hard time relaxing—the perfectionism thing—and Jack said, “You seem perfectly relaxed now.” And I was. And I was insanely, cautiously happy.

Floating

2006-02-02T10:54:00.000-05:00

It's been a quiet week here on the blog, but there's been lots going on behind the scenes.

The big news here is that I'm officially working with a real, bonafide agent (!) who's enthusiastic about the project. I'm stunned, and feeling a bit floaty.

I can't tell you what it's like to go from working on a huge project like this on your own, wondering if it really does have potential, to having someone join you and believe in it with you. Someone who knows the publishing industry and thinks it's worth pitching--thinks it's sell-able. (Not that my faithful blog readers aren't great, but I have a suspicion that most of you are on my short list of close friends and you're sort of required to like it. ;-)

I'll be editing, writing, and reworking over the next several weeks to get things market-ready. I'm hoping to get back to posting regularly in the next week or so, but things may be a bit sporadic.

In other news, my chronic fatigue is back in force, which is so incredibly frustrating. I'm running a fever. I've had a string of days when taking a shower and actually washing my hair seems to use most of my available energy. It makes me a little crazy (some days, more than a little). I keep hoping that tomorrow will be better. And maybe it will.

23: All things Frederick

2006-01-25T08:58:00.000-05:00

I met Frederick during Monday lunch on the Wycliffe lawn. Actually, I was heading in for seconds, he was heading out with firsts, and I invited him to join our table.

A guy friend told me once that he can tell within thirty seconds if he wants to seriously date a girl. I was deeply offended. I mean, is it really all that superficial? The sound of her voice, he said, and the way she looks—his impression after that thirty seconds is never wrong. I make those snap judgments myself but admit to often being wrong (i.e., Jack), and actually being pleased to be wrong. I love the surprise of finding incredible potential where first I could see none.

But with Frederick our ten or fifteen minutes of conversation (okay, so I did have an inkling of this in the first thirty seconds) showed me that we could never be a match, for all my romantic musings. I can’t say exactly why, although our theological bents seemed quite different, and the vibe just wasn’t there. And by this point, to be honest, I was consumed elsewhere, so maybe I wanted Frederick to not really be a match.

Oh, and his name isn’t Frederick, but Jesse. Frederick may have been in Oxford, but he wasn’t at Wycliffe, and I never actually met him.

22: An hour

2006-01-24T09:46:00.000-05:00

My favorite hour of the entire trip was sitting by the River Cherwell with Jack early Monday evening watching punts go by, talking.

That morning, we got seats together by the open doors for lectures (moving air being a premium when air conditioning is non-existent). David Wenham was talking about the Sermon on the Mount, about its two groups of pronouncements—the first about God’s grace and the second, which can be “profoundly depressing,” about God’s standards, which are so high that no one can live by them.

I leaned over to tell Jack that I have such a hard time balancing those things, the grace and judgment of God. He said, “I’ve found in my life, the grace has to come first.” His answer was significant to me; I sensed that he understood my own struggles accepting God’s grace and was a step ahead of me in figuring them out.

Monday afternoon, the guys went out for a tour, and I stayed behind to take a nap, promising to look up info on Shakespeare in the Park and try to get tickets for that evening. But the tickets ended up being about $40 apiece, which seemed like too much to pay (especially after having just been to the Shakespeare Free for All in Carter Barron, where Sandy and I sat in damp seats under a spitting sky, praying it wouldn’t pour. The Shakespeare Theatre’s modern production of Midsummer Night’s Dream had been enthralling, with characters that looked like they were from the 40’s or 50’s and fairies with huge larger-than-life feathered costumes). Anyway, I didn’t want to spend that much money, especially when it was another production of Midsummer Night’s Dream, so I left a note under Jack’s door to let him know that I was going to walk through the park, and that I would come back and meet them for dinner at 6:00.

At lunch, Dan had mentioned a grassy spot by the river where the Oxford dons used to lay out naked. I wandered half a mile or so through University Park (which contains one of every tree that grows in England) the way he said to go, aiming southeast, continuing through a few gates, to the loveliest spot, with the small river on two sides, huge trees, and expanses of sun. I think what I liked most about it is that it is quiet, not in the middle of a byway. It seems you have to sort of know that it’s there. There were groups of people talking and solitary people sleeping. I found a grassy spot in the sun right by the river and sat reading, watching tourists and students come punting by from time to time, contemplating the lectures and the week ahead.

As I headed back, I was caught off guard by someone too far away for me to recognize, calling my name. Surely not me, I thought, and ignored him. But it was Jack (!), and it was me he was after. He had gotten my note and decided to track me down.

We purposefully neglected our 6:00 appointment to meet the other guys for dinner, and headed back through the gates and the trees to the grassy spot I just left, and sat for an hour or an hour and a half just talking. It was quiet, sunny and 75 degrees or so—perfect. (I didn’t know the actual temperature for most of the trip because I never bothered to figure out the Farenheit-Celsius conversion.) There was a loud crowd of tourists who managed to get their punt a bit stuck in the grass by the bank, and two ten- or eleven-year-old boys who stripped down to their shorts and eventually worked up the courage to jump in. We sat with our quiet conversation in the midst of the summer commotion. I’d never felt so comfortable, so at home, just sitting and talking.

21: Falling

2006-01-23T11:47:00.000-05:00

I don’t know exactly what it means to fall in love, or what I think about that, so I’m not sure how to talk about what was happening in Oxford between Jack and I. If the ways of love were a mystery to Solomon, will any of us ever really understand them? (Thus, the proliferation of books and songs and plays and movies about this one marvelous, mysterious thing.)

Fundamentally I believe that love is a verb, that it is doing things you may not feel like doing and giving and listening and generally putting someone else in front of yourself. And perhaps it’s not possible to make that kind of commitment for a lifetime without an initial rush of emotion. I only know that on Sunday night after we met and went to evensong and to the pub and walked home talking about our families and mornings and evenings that I knew this had potential. And Monday night I thought it could be serious. And by Tuesday night I knew—well, I’m not sure exactly what—perhaps that he was The Guy I Never Thought I Would Meet.

One thing that surprised me was the way my perception of time changed. There were so many significant moments, so many in each day that the days felt stretched into weeks, and by the end of the week, I wondered at feeling like we’d known each other for six months. (The contrast between days in Oxford and days at home—which could pass quickly with a couple loads of laundry, a movie, and a Target run—made me see time’s malleable subjectivity.)

Unlike other relationships I’ve had, my love for Jack seemed to have depth and stability, to be founded on mutual faith and genuine respect, honest intellectual conversations, strong doses of humor and comfort. So our attraction had something solid on which to play.

In some ways this Big Thing was a combination of hundreds of tiny, important things. (I’ll attempt to enumerate some of those in the next few posts without being tedious.) If alone they were small, together they were undeniable, pointing to something true and sound, of incredible value—pointing to us.

Or at least it seemed that way.

20: Toast

2006-01-20T10:10:00.000-05:00

The next morning I came downstairs at 8:00 for breakfast. I should say, that, as someone who’s far from a morning person, eating breakfast at 8:00 AM in a roomful of strangers is very much my idea of purgatory. I would not talk to anyone ever before 10:00 AM—best friends included— if I could manage it. I was wearing my fun pink pleated skirt with the flip-flops that match exactly, but preferred that no one took any notice at all—did not look in my direction, attempt to strike up a conversation, or force me to rouse my still-slumbering social skills. I would have given anything for an invisibility cloak, actually. Most especially, I didn’t want to admit the possibility that something romantic could exist here, at least not before I’d had coffee and a decent plate of something substsantial.

When I walked into the room, the fire alarm went off. The whole room smelled of toasting bread (alas, no bacon or eggs to be had). Jack was sitting right by the door, looking very good and incredibly awake. He smiled at me and said, “You walk in the room and bells ring. You did good getting up early this morning.” I thought to myself, Crap, he’s still here. And like a schoolgirl I couldn’t eat my toast.

19: Ah, guys…

2006-01-19T10:59:00.000-05:00

Jack and Simon and their friend Paul and I wandered through Oxford looking for a pub that served dinner, and ended up at the Eagle and Child—the Bird and the Baby as the locals call it—the pub where Lewis and Tolkein and the rest of the Inklings group of writers took their famous “long liquid lunches” every Tuesday. It is small and a bit dark, as any pub should be. I loved it for Lewis’s sake, and felt compelled to drink half a pint (okay, I’m a wuss) in his honor.

The conversation was rapid-fire. We managed to cover our religious backgrounds (largely rather conservative, which we have all moved away from to some degree or other); Simon’s work as a journalist covering the world of religion; Christians and politics (Christians in politics—very good; political Christianity—very bad); the shenanigans of various Members of Congress; the importance of ending poverty and various other Christian efforts in social justice; the dangers in the cultural trends of American Christianity (which I frustratingly cannot fully articulate); and my research on Austen and the relative strengths and weaknesses of her various works and the different movie adaptations (Persuasion with Amanda Root and the BBC version of P&P take the lead, at least for me and Simon; Jack admits to having watched some of them with his mother, and I wonder, what does that say about him?).

This is near-supreme goodness, I think, being in Oxford surrounded by single guys, having thoughtful, fun conversation. It’s their camaraderie I value more than anything else. Simon is engaged, after all, Paul—the “plumber” from New England (he’s actually a proctologist)—seems a little older and maybe not my type, and I have decided that I can safely rule Jack out because he is Baptist and has a background in politics. A single woman who wants to be married has, ironically, no sharper skill than that which rules out potential suitors before fully understanding their character. I have to admit to feeling a certain kinship with Elizabeth Bennet in that regard (although, no doubt, I am more extreme).

And before the evening is over, I wonder if my preference for the dashing stranger has me imitating Marianne’s mistakes in some form. My determination to rule Jack out doesn’t keep me from throwing him a series of challenges. I set off on a few of my soap-box pronouncements—like a tongue-in-cheek, eyebrow-raised, condescending, “You really believe there are good people in politics?” and a much more sincere, “On so many political issues, you can find a Christian justification for either position.”—and watched his reactions. And by the end of the conversation I knew that he wasn’t a typical Christian conservative guy. He’s politically moderate, supports conservation causes, is deeply concerned for the poor, and believes (wonder of all wonders) that free choice and predestination work together in the salvation process in some way our finite brains cannot understand.

We walked back to Wycliffe ahead of the others, Jack and I, talking about our families and other personal things. He asked if I was a morning person and I said, “No. Actually, I can’t imagine the possibility of ever being a morning person under any circumstances whatsoever.” And I learned that he is an early riser, almost every day. And this little exchange seems to signify something (because the other skill that single women possess is overanalyzing every turn of phrase), our moving from group discussion to near-intimate details.

18: Spiritual awakenings

2006-01-18T10:32:00.000-05:00

Christ Church Cathedral is one of the smallest in England. As with many of the college chapels in Oxford, when you walk in you are met by rows of seats—wooden pews (which in many of the chapels can be small, harsh, and uncomfortable)—lining the sides, facing inward. I have attended evensong at the National Cathedral in D.C. from time to time, and sit in the choir when I go, because there’s room there for the small group of people that come; when you sit up there you feel like you’re part of what’s going on, closer somehow to the Psalms and prayers. But in the National Cathedral and most others, the choir is a quiet, secluded place up at the front, set apart from the masses in rows of pews that fill the depth of the structure. Here, at Christ Church, it is as though everyone is in the choir, because there are no masses of pews. We are all intimate and participatory. My group sat in a row of folding chairs in what seemed to be the north transept, although the cathedral isn’t exactly cruciform. The service was crowded that night, but even tucked back on the side, I could feel the beauty of the building.

If I had a bit of bravura and somewhat disguised perhaps-I’ll-deign-to-talk-to-you air on the outside, inside I was still more than slightly panicked, still struggling with the unexpressed and perhaps irrational fear that I had misstepped somehow, that all of this was too big for me. The service washed over me with a continual sense of the grace and goodness of God.

Being regularly exhausted submits me not only to mood swings but also to dramatic spiritual experiences. I don’t know how to explain them, except that in some ways you know things more fully and more clearly when you are physically quite at the end of yourself than when you are able to carry out your daily tasks without ever thinking your psyche might slip through a fissure in the fabric of the universe and you might never recover.

One day, after I left my job, I sat in the tiny sunroom of my townhouse at the café table that’s squinched into the corner by the french door, reading psalms and thinking about the utter truth of Jesus. In my exhaustion His character—His complete truth, the kind I have never experienced here—was clearer and more important and more true to me than it had ever been. I sat daydreaming in the sun and lost myself in it.

I was weary of the problems I’d had at work, of not being able to get people to listen to the complete story, always having to summarize and synthesize, and give them conclusions for which they didn’t understand all the background, and having them build on this scant foundation a thought system of their own about my work or the problems we were addressing that was not entirely true. Every experience, it seemed, was more complex than anyone else truly wanted to know, and thus they always had slight half-truths, and I felt scandalized, and misrepresented, and lost. And I began to sense that it is nearly impossible for any of us to be completely true, when the mass of raw material we are working with—the heart and soul and mind that form our thoughts and desires and words—is so completely faulty to begin with.

I realized then that Jesus knew all the exacts, everything the way it exactly happened, all the intricacies and dependencies and turns of phrase. And also that He was true in a way no one else ever would be—completely and thoroughly, with no shades of doubt, nothing motivated by pride, nothing muddy, everything clear and true and sound and trustworthy.

And this was so important to me as I sat in the sun that I thought about being in the presence of this complete truth and imagined declaring its goodness—His goodness—the way the angels do, maybe, proclaiming and honoring Him for who He is. So I pictured myself going around in front of Jesus everywhere He went in Heaven, preceeding Him, declaring Him to be faithful and true and calling the rest of Heaven to attention. And I quickly determined that that would get insanely annoying for all of eternity.

But in this case, in the folding chairs in the transept of Christ Church Cathedral, what hit me with full spiritual force in my exhaustion was the grace and goodness of God—that which I had begun to hope for in the everyday circumstances of my life, but not entirely expect. I kept hearing those words in my head, and as I looked up at the gorgeous ceiling I imagined this grace and goodness coming down to me—to me. I do not know what the readings were, but we sang a song about Jesus giving us strength for our daily tasks, and the prayers and the song and the readings and the sung psalms—all of them added up to the message that I wasn’t beyond grace, and that perhaps I could hope even now, on this trip, for God’s abundant blessings, whatever form those might take.

17: Evensong

2006-01-17T14:21:00.000-05:00

I didn’t expect a life-changing moment when I followed Dan’s group out the back of the Wycliffe property to evensong at Christ Church Cathedral Sunday night after our initial group meeting. (The meeting proved to be good in spite of having to sustain some painful small talk, and I distinctly perceived a certain someone casting a glance or two in my direction.) There were three or four other church groups that night—some conservative churches, some more charismatic. All it took was the words ‘cathedral’ and ‘evensong’ and I knew where I was going.

Someone said there were a couple guys from D.C. in the group, and I thought they would be good to talk to, acquaintances maybe, at least until I had a chance to meet the dashing guy with the big suitcase I’d bumped into on the stairs.

I found out that Simon is a writer, and that Jack is in a masters program in D.C. that I’ve looked at several times—a masters in the classics, the program my friend Lilian did years ago. And looking back it seems that we were instant friends, Jack and I, although I didn’t realize it on that walk to Christchurch Cathedral Sunday evening, didn’t give it two thoughts.

It seems that love is often like this. We are occupied elsewhere, we evaluate the situation and think that Love will not make an entrance here, so we move on. And the next time we turn around, we are surprised to find her well established, warming herself by the fire. (Yet, even in the midst of our surprise, it seems that we knew all along that this is how it would be.)

I think Eleanor genuinely expected nothing of Fanny’s brother Edward, and could only admit that she liked him, when really her heart was engaged. She didn’t understand fully until she knew the situation to be impossible. And then there’s Marianne, insisting on flashy Willoughby, only to be surprised later at her serious and steadfast returning of Colonel Brandon’s love. And, of course, Elizabeth and Darcy, who fell in love in spite of themselves and their very bad First Impressions (which was Jane’s original title for Pride and Prejudice).

And such was my experience in Oxford. I was busy elsewhere, unaware that Love was doing some deft matchmaking behind my back.

16: Walking

2006-01-11T16:12:00.000-05:00

It was sunny and seventy-something in Oxford—perfect—and my backpack quickly began to stick to my t-shirt with sweat as I headed south down Banbury Road into the city center. They say it’s a fifteen-minute walk from Wycliffe, but I managed to do it in ten, turning left on Parks Road and passing the University Parks on the left—large green expanses surrounded by trees and flowers and flowering bushes, college students sprawled in the shade with a book or a companion, or both.

I passed the science buildings and Kebel College, walked by Wadham College and crossed Broad Street onto Catte, in the heart of the city center. There are thirty-six colleges in Oxford, and college buildings, chapels, and quads are spread throughout the city, a jumble of imposing buildings, interspersed with more commerce than I imagined. Broad Street and High Street and Cornmarket are lined with shops—sandwich places, mobile phone stores, American fast food places (argh… must Oxford have a Burger King and Pizza Hut?), bookstores, tourist shops.

In college I visited Cambridge once with my parents. I had been studying in a little beach town on Spain’s Atlantic coast—a difficult trip where eight of us stayed with an American family whose marriage seemed to be breaking (or already broken) and whose house was torn apart, mid-remodeling. I remember a half-finished stairway to the second floor, sheetrock and nails and plaster and an open roof, the husband sleeping on a mattress in the mess, our teacher slouching along with his Mexican accent and getting angry with me for drinking tinto de verano. (Our Baptist credo precluded any kind of alcohol.)

I had yet to master the art of bathing suits that looked good on me, or style in general, and spent four weeks with the awkwardness of trying to not be awkward in a foreign country, compounding my sweet-smart, somewhat-unsophisticated-and-insecure persona. I was cowed at the prospect of not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. So when my parents met me in Madrid for a short European tour, I was thrilled to see them and alternately moody and mean.

I hold a little-visited string of wonderful memories and embarrassing moments from that trip in my mind. We rode a gondola over gorgeous Barcelona’s evening lights, sat in a street café drinking red wine in pain after walking around literally all of Paris (my mother was most in awe at the self-cleaning bathrooms at Arc de Triomphe), struggled to find a tiny fishing village in Scotland someone on the plane had recommended to me, only to find it, well, tiny. I was embarrassed at the time because of my parents’ solid American tourist mentality. They did not even attempt to be good Europeans, I thought. They wanted fat-free creamer for their coffee and real American ham instead of jamon serrano and generally talked loudly and shared food in restaurants in distinctly American ways. But looking back I am embarrassed for myself, my little aggressions, my lack of grace.

In the middle of that trip we visited Cambridge. It was cool and quiet, and somehow comforting. Gorgeous college buildings and chapels were softened with mist. We watched punters on the River Cam and had tea in a cozy shop—small tables, ham and cheese sandwiches with butter and grated cheese (or was that in Edinburgh…?). My parents waited what must have been an incredibly long time for me to pick out perfect matching Cambridge sweatshirts for me and my friend Shelley back home. All in all, it was lovely. I was charmed. And I expected Oxford to be the same.

If possible, I was disappointed with Oxford’s contrasting noise, dirt, and general commotion.

At the center of Oxford I passed the Bridge of Sighs, the copy of a Venetian bridge which looks incredibly romantic in pictures but really just connects one college building to another. The Bodleian Library, founded in the 1300’s—one of the world’s largest—was next, although I didn’t investigate beyond walking by the tower entrance. After that the round Radcliffe Camera with its domed top, which I found charming but couldn’t help wondering what inspired them to make it round. I eyed the café behind the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, one of the prettiest spots in town, and then made my way down to get a look at the Thames.

On my way down St. Aldates, I wandered through a bit of meadow by Christ Church Cathedral and began to be enthralled. Christ Church College is the largest in Oxford, founded by Wolsey in 1525 as an ecclisiastical college. The main quad is more than twice the size of most, with (of course) carefully manicured lawns with paths leading to a central fountain. The small cathedral sits opposite the quad entrance toward the right, and when you view the cathedral from the meadow to the south, where it’s surrounded by open space, it feels both quaint and significant. There’s a perfect spot for pictures by the meadow gate, where you can get flowers and college and cathedral in one shot.

I found the punts on the Thames, by a great little pub called Head of the River, with picnic tables right down to the water, and wandered back through town north on Aldates and Cornmarket and Giles. I passed the martyr’s memorial to Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer, an ornate tower in the middle of Magdalen Street—sort of a steeple without a church. I stuck my head in The Eagle and Child pub where Lewis and Tolkein and their Inklings met, passed St. John’s College where the Austens studied and walked back to Banbury Road.

15: Waking

2006-01-10T14:38:00.000-05:00

On Sunday morning, I slept in and cautiously navigated the toilet-in-the-hallway situation in my pajamas. This required several things not part of my regular habits: decent pajamas as opposed to just a ratty old t-shirt, for one thing—mine were cropped pants in a thin white jersey, with green and pink stripes, and a pink t-shirt—love them!; a sports bra (perhaps the British can manage going braless in pajamas around complete strangers, but I find that prospect horrifying); and the ability to smile and offer some type of appropriate communication when bumping into a middle-aged man in a suit as one is running to the loo first thing in the morning. My strategy was a bit of a lurk-and-dash–check to see that the coast was clear, make a run for it, and pray that the one closest to my side of the hall would not be occupied, which would necessitate going around a little corner, exposing me to further interactions with people in real clothes.

I took a shower and ate a cereal bar, and got ready to take in Oxford before our afternoon kick-off meeting, which I still didn’t want to attend, as it would involve meeting people I didn’t already know—which, I suppose, is assumed in the definition of “meeting.”

So I timidly set off down the stairs, in my green t-shirt and matching cool-ish sort of walking shoes and almost-knee-length jean skirt with the ruffle which is ever-so-slightly trailer trash but darn cute. And on the stairs I bumped into a terribly good-looking stranger. Actually, he was carrying up a huge suitcase. I was in his way. I could have easily gotten out of his way if I hadn’t been a bit dumfounded—I generally lose the ability to think and act with good sense around guys I could be interested in (like any good chick lit heroine, but not promising for one who aspires after Austen), and then there was the jet lag—I wasn’t thinking entirely correctly. I took him in immediately—dark, wavy hair, green eyes (or were they blue?), great smile, bit of a tan—and went on my way with a much lighter heart, not devoting much mental energy to it, but knowing somehow that he would be Frederick.

14: Grace

2006-01-06T12:03:00.000-05:00

There was more to my panic, really, than my fears about the trip. I think whenever I step out to do something big, I wonder if I will have stepped beyond the reaches of God’s grace. And perhaps that fear formed the heart of my anxiety.

I have not always believed in the grace of God. Actually, since I was roughly three, I’ve believed in the big, eternity-changing, salvation sort of grace. I prayed a prayer to ask Jesus in my heart—childlike and beautiful, I imagine—when I was three and we were all saying our evening prayers in my brother’s room. I remember kneeling on the shag carpet with our hands folded on his seventies comforter. I remember that he laughed. Actually, I don’t remember that anymore but I used to remember that and told myself that version of the story for so many years that now it’s fact, even if it didn’t actually happen. As a child in Baptist schools I prayed that prayer over and over, in chapel, at Vacation Bible School during the summer; everyone wanted to know in those days the date and time I prayed the “sinner’s prayer.” I was never entirely sure which one stuck.

Then in college I wondered if I really believed any of it—God, Jesus, the Bible, the need for salvation. I took two years to feel my way through doubt. I still knew, in some way that I’m not sure I can explain, that God was with me, that he was guiding me even as I asked questions and investigated what the rest of the world believed. I studied C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity and Surprised by Joy, and eventually determined that Christianity was true according to my experience, which was all I could use to judge it. I felt like it would take me a lifetime to evaluate all the logical, rational arguments and I didn’t have the brain power for that or the time and as much as I could evaluate them they felt true to me, so I came back. But I came back to a different faith. It was shaky and easily faltered and could be toppled over into a whirlwind of doubt by the little breath of a series of questions from my brother or a scientific article questioning the existence of Jesus or the occasional realization of the hugeness of the world that did not believe as I did.

But that is not the point here. I firmly believed in the love and grace of God. I knew that was one of Christianity’s distinctives. I could tell you how to confess your sins and be forgiven “of all unrighteousness”—even the things you didn’t know you did. But I didn’t actually believe in grace for myself, on a daily basis.

I’ve often felt like it’s impossible to keep up with my confession. I am simply too wrong, in my core. As soon as I confess and receive forgiveness and occasionally feel the depth of that, the cleanness of being right with God, I set off on another pattern of wrong thinking, where I am the center of my universe, where even when I try to put other people first and love God (and don’t always put that much energy into that), I fail miserably, and am aware of the fact that seemingly two seconds after I have been irrevocably washed clean I am dirty again, like filthy rags.

And years of church and faith – being instructed over and over to read my Bible every single day to please God, being taught implicitly that my spirituality was directly related to the number of services I attended, or the number of people I witnessed to, and being part of a family that doesn’t enjoy or maybe believe in laying about, in taking three hours by the pool with only a drink and a magazine (we are the industrious, entrepreneurial type)—I believed, I suppose, in the necessity of earning the pleasure of God.

I thrived on doing and forgot how to be. When I finally went to counseling to work through my depression, I was in a state in life where I couldn’t even make myself a cup of tea. I would watch my roommate make tea and wonder how she could take the time to do such a thing, to let the water boil, let the leaves sit, to actually slow down enough to drink it. Everything in my life was about doing. Every minute was scheduled to take advantage of my limited energy. So I worked until I crashed and couldn’t work any longer. And when I crashed, on my lost days, I could barely make or eat anything. I couldn’t even enjoy watching TV. The days would rush by as I laid on my couch with pictures going by on the screen in front of me, too numb and dissociated to be involved in the stories.

Everything was work. Work was my salvation. And not being able to work made me distraught.

It bothered me that I had forgotten how to relax. I wasn’t enjoying life. And perhaps part of me knew that I couldn’t save myself.

13: Panic

2006-01-05T11:32:00.000-05:00

I suppose I should say that for all the laughing and plotting about Frederick Kent and half-serious musings about whether or how Austen might manifest herself on this trip, there was another, bigger part of me that was consumed with trying to manage my anxiety.

My dad said once—I think I had just published my first book and was worrying out loud that I would never write again—he said, with genuine shock, “Man, Lori, you worry about everything.” And I thought, he has no idea. No idea. If he really knew, he would wonder that I could be his daughter—easygoing, laid back him. Stressed out, panicked, living-in-fear-of-death me.

I can remember a time when I wasn’t like this, when I thought B’s on my report card were excellent and when my school uniform was always a bit sloppy, but that all changed when my family left our comfortable San Antonio home—lovely, hot, hispanic San Antonio—for the tornado alley of Wichita Falls, Texas. But that’s a story for later.

On the plane on the way to England, I panicked. Maybe it was the lack of sleep. (I had only gotten two hours the night before I left and the week prior had been hit or miss, but mostly miss.) Maybe it was because I was pushing my still-tired self too hard. Maybe it was my huge expectations for the trip. (I thought maybe I could figure out whether I wanted to go to grad school in Oxford, meet the guy I would marry, and get lots of writing material to sustain my new little freelance career and ensure that this trip wasn’t wasted.) I told myself I could just have fun, keep a journal, let it all work itself out. But the other side of me was straining to forge ahead on all of these life goals, all these achievements.

So here I was with an incredibly heavy backpack (20 pounds—12 pounds of Austen books, 8 pounds of shampoo?) and suitcase (another 40 pounds) to lug around England for a month, a registration at a school in Oxford where I would know no one and where—because of their focus on evangelism and apologetics—I feared they might ask me to go to the street corner to witness to someone (bringing back painful memories of high school youth group), and a very detailed itinerary of Austen sites, which now seemed more than intimidating.

One of the initial appeals of the trip, the chance to meet so many interesting people, lost its charm. I decided that I was in no shape to meet anyone, and would rather have stayed at home with my Harry Potter book. I decided Jane would have agreed with me—Jane who rarely ventured outside her familiar circle, who didn’t like being forced into society, forced to interact with people she didn’t know or didn’t care to know. I wrote in my journal, “Perhaps they will not be terribly nice or intelligent to save me the trouble of liking them much. Bad hair day. It appears we’ve just turned south toward the UK. 2:36 left! That is, if I do not get a blood clot and die of DVT, or collapse from hunger and exhaustion.”

I got up to go to the bathrooom again to prevent said blood-clot-danger of flying, and walked by a professional-looking guy on the aisle opposite me, two rows up. He was sleeping or watching a movie, and I would watch his screen from two rows back to see what he was watching, but I barely noticed him or his glasses or his neat hair. And he didn’t notice me, alternately anxious and thrilled, in my pink t-shirt and long jeans and ugly new hiking boots. Just as well. I was having a bad hair day.

12: Expectation

2006-01-04T10:33:00.000-05:00

I suppose I was in a mood for falling in love when I left for Oxford. My friend Kristine talks about “crowded rooms,” as in “one day you spot a stranger across a crowded room” and everything changes, and I thought this Oxford classroom might be a bit crowded in that sense of the word.

Plus, I suppose, as a single woman, there is always the expectation that if you are going to meet someone (not that you have to, but if you are going to, and it seems right somehow to imagine this happening in your life), it should be now, because time is getting on and all and now we are thirty-three (and who could have ever imagined that we would be thirty-three and single?).

And part of me believed in the mystical and mysterious—and wacky—just enough to think that, as an Austen devotee following in her steps, perhaps she would deign to craft a little romantic comedy of my own, in real life, from beyond the grave (which seems absolutely ridiculous on paper, but there it is). Funny that these little thoughts we barely acknowledge become hopes or beliefs.

And then, of course, my friends were glad to help me ponder the possibility of whirlwind-British-summer-romance while acknowledging its complete innecessity to the outcome of the trip—but wouldn’t it be fabulous, if, you know, you never know when you might meet someone, and I was going to be in England after all—home of Colin Firth in all his shirt-dripping glory. (Except thanks to Bridget Jones we now know that Colin Firth actually lives in Rome, for all his traipsing about the English countryside in movies.)

All that justification to say that, when I left, I hoped for something, and tried to expect nothing.

There was one guy we knew of who seemed acceptably interesting, if American, who was planning to be in Oxford the same week I was, at a program that sounded remarkably similar to the program I had signed up for. He was a friend of Matt’s girlfriend, and Matt is a very good friend of my very good friend Jordan (which sounds confusing but really this connection was simpler than it sounds). Jordan was going to a party at Matt’s, she mentioned that I was getting ready to leave for Oxford, he remembered Jill’s friend… and thus the plotting began.

What we heard from Matt was that this guy, Frederick Kent was his name, was a lawyer (smart!) and very orthodox. That combination among the single Christian population is, as we have established, a bit difficult to find. And he was going to be in Oxford, so he must have some sense of adventure, right? And I determined that he would be good looking, although Matt gave us frustratingly little information about his appearance.

So as I packed I wondered exactly what Frederick Kent might be like, and just how much potential he might have. And when my father dropped me off at the airport at an insanely early hour for my 8:10 AM international flight, I wandered through the airport picking out guys—the incredibly good-looking guy I would never have a chance with, the business traveler with a big belly, the Buddhist monk, the devout Muslim with his wife and children, the gawky teenager with his MP3 player—looking at them and thinking, “Ah, Frederick Kent!” and having a little laugh at their expense (or perhaps my own).

11: Arrival

2006-01-03T09:55:00.000-05:00

I arrived in Oxford in the dark, around 11:15 on Saturday night, on The Airline Coach straight from Heathrow. I looked through the windows for signs of romance and spires, but the city felt heavy and dark. The streets teemed with college students in going-out attire, and I—in my jeans and hiking shoes, with my overstuffed day pack and eau de travel—felt at once like a nerd, the girl who doesn’t have plans on a Saturday night. I wonder how Jane felt at seven, on her first foray away from family, a child here in the midst of the bustle of college life.

When the cab dropped me at 54 Banbury Road and I found the front door, there was a note giving a number to call, only my cell phone didn’t work because it was a UK phone and I couldn’t charge it until I got into my room on the other side of the dark, heavy door. The streets here outside the city center were nearly deserted. Verging on panic, I managed to borrow a mobile from a couple walking by, only to get no answer. Finally Dan, the summer school assistant, answered my exasperated knock to find me frustrated and travel-weary and nearly incapable of conversation.

My room was in the back on the second floor (or the first floor, the Brits would say – up one flight of stairs from ground level). Under flourescent light in the dark of night is the worst time to be introduced to a room like this. It is spartan, but not in the quaint old-English-hall way I expected—more in an old-70s-furniture-and-dirty-orange-ish-brown-carpet way. The walls are institutional cream. The blue blanket on the bed is dirty and upon closer inspection it looks like someone’s been sick on the middle of the box spring and it was never cleaned up. Perhaps the room is 12x12, with a window next to the bed through which tonight I can only make out a large tree, the fire escape, and some kind of path. There’s a desk on the other side of the window, a sink in the corner, and a small wardrobe. The toilet is down the hall, out in the main stairwell, but there are two showers on our side of the hall, which is better than I expected.

There is a fear hovering in my mind that I am all alone in the dark in a dirty, small British dorm room with no air conditioning, in a town full of hip college students of whom I am not one. I resolve to embrace said dirty dorm room and make it my own. My Austen books go on the shelves by the door, my red dress and sweater and gore-tex jacket and striped sleeveless shirt in the wardrobe, my bathroom stuff on the shelf over the sink. I pin up my map and a note from Bev and Jordan and Sandy on the bulletin board over the desk and open one of their cards (from Sandy, a picture of a guy carrying a huge orange tree through customs, with a note inside that says, “Bring me something” to which she’s added, “like a guy from Oxford,” which makes me laugh) and put it on the table by the bed.

Finally, sometime after 1:00 AM, I turn out the light. I leave the window open but there’s no screen and my foggy brain is thinking, what would happen if a bird flew in and can snakes crawl up to the second floor?

Our Austen Adorations

2005-12-30T14:28:00.000-05:00

This article just went up on BreakPoint yesterday:

Austen's Good Sense: Classic Works Inspiring Modern Sensibility
Forgive me if I evaluate the current dating market, think ho-hum, and put in an Austen movie. Most girls I know would take Darcy any day (of the Firth or MacFayden variety) but probably can’t put into words what Darcy has that they’re missing.

When I started the blog, a friend, John, asked me what motivated the devotion to Austen. He's never understood it. Was it just the fairytale romance, or was there something more redemptive about it? Which got me to thinking, and worked itself out a bit in the BreakPoint piece.

I do think it's significant that while Austen essentially created the chick lit genre, her characters were not the bumbling idiots of today's stories. I mean, I'm a huge Bridget Jones fan, but as a book reviewer, I have to say that I'm sick of chick lit heroines who are completely inept. When you pick up a chick lit book today, you pretty much expect the heroine to be daft, to eat too much, to stick her tongue out at people, to sleep with her boss, to be rewarded in some sense for her failings instead of for recognizing them and being willing to change. It was a fun little formula for a while, but enough already!

I keep hoping to put up more of the Oxford writing and keep holding off on it. I went to Greenberry's again this afternoon and read through it and just think it could be so much better. We'll see... I had hoped to work on it this week, but there have been a series of deadlines, and there was a peeping Tom at my house last week, which has necessitated putting up a fence, which has meant having to deal with the Architectural Committee (argh!), all of which has meant that I haven't had the peaceful week I thought I would to immerse myself in Oxford. Maybe this weekend...

Glory, love, and honour...

2005-12-19T14:30:00.000-05:00

Last Friday, December 16, most of the Jane Austen societies in North America (and perhaps around the world) had their annual meetings in honor of the anniversary of Jane's birthday.

I would love to have gone to the local meeting, but I was in the West Indies on a little cruise with my family. (Okay, technically it was the Bahamas and not the West Indies -- as Mrs. Croft would say, "We do not call Bermuda or Bahama the West Indies, you know." I just like saying that.)

But in honor of Jane's birthday (if a bit belated), here are a few lines on Jane from Rudyard Kipling:

Jane lies in Winchester--
Blessed be her shade!
Praise the Lord for making her,
And her for all she made!

And while the stones of Winchester,
Or Milsom Street, remain,
Glory, love, and honour
Unto England's Jane!

Love this, but Kipling was unfortunately rather free with the exclamation points. (Can't stand exclamation points!)

Jane is buried in Winchester, of course, and Milsom Street was (and still is) one of the fashionable shopping streets in Bath. Anne, Elizabeth, and Mrs. Clay in Persuasion are in Milsom Street when they duck into Molland's to escape the rain and Anne spots Captain Wentworth for the first time since the tragedy at Lyme.

Like Jane, I found the fashionable Bath shops too expensive for more than window shopping. (Although I did find a fantastic bead store that helped me make a necklace with a cross I bought at Alton Abbey. It's called Bijoux Beads on 2 Abbey Street just a stone's throw from the Roman Baths. I highly recommend it!)

Hoping to post more of the Oxford writing later this week.

C.S. Lewis and imagination

2005-12-14T10:39:00.000-05:00

My article on C.S. Lewis and the theological value of imagination went up yesterday on BreakPoint. Fans of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe may enjoy it.

One of my favorite memories from Oxford was the chance to see C.S. Lewis's home, The Kilns. Since most of us at Wycliffe were Lewis devotees, we had been to The Eagle and Child, the pub where the Inklings met, and been to Magdalene College where Lewis taught for many years. We walked around Addison's Walk, a trail on the college grounds where Lewis and Tolkein and Dyson talked about Christianity as 'true myth' one September evening shortly before Lewis's conversion, and saw where his rooms were in the 'New Building' (which I think dates back to 1730-something).

But at the end of the week I had arranged for a tour of Lewis's home, and two of my friends were able to go with me. The Kilns is not intended to be a musuem or a place where people come to pay homage. It's actually used to house graduate students during the year and then they run various summer school programs during the break. We caught them as one summer school group was leaving and another coming in.

I expected a little tour of the usual "Here is where Lewis wrote, here is the kitchen" variety. Instead, we were welcomed in, made ourselves at home in the study where Lewis did most of his writing, had tea and cookies and sat around and talked about Lewis for a good half hour or so before seeing the house. It was one of those pinch-yourself moments. Amazing.

Here are some pics:

Holiday books for kids

2005-12-12T13:02:00.000-05:00

A bit off the Austen track... I have a review in yesterday's Washington Post Book World, of kids' holiday books with religious themes. (I didn't realize it was going to come out yesterday until a friend saw it and called me to congratulate me. As a writer, sometimes you're the last to know...) Thought you might enjoy seeing it. One of my new Christmas favorites for small children is What Star is This? by Joseph Slate with gorgeous folk-art-ish illustrations by Alison Jay.

Also coming soon (hopefully), an article on C.S. Lewis and the theological value of imagination. Will link to that as well.

10: Oxford beginnings

2005-12-08T12:45:00.000-05:00

Oxford is perhaps an incongruous starting place for one studying the life of Austen, but not entirely so. Jane was sent away to boarding school for the first time at the age of seven (her mother sent her with her sister Cassandra, because in her words, ‘if Cassandra’s head had been going to be cut off, Jane would have her’s cut off too.’), to a school in Oxford run by a woman who was connected to the family. Her older brother James, then eighteen, had been studying there at St. John’s for four years already. Her great uncle on her mother’s side, sharp-witted Theophilus Leigh, was master at Balliol College. At somewhere around ninety, then, he would have seemed ancient to small Jane.

Actually, Oxford is perhaps where everything started.

George Austen, Jane’s father, came to St. John’s in 1747 when he was sixteen. He had been orphaned young – his mother died in childbirth, his father died a year after marrying a new wife. The stepmother, like the evil ones in fairy tales, kicked the little Austen children out to fend for themselves. George landed with an aunt in Tonbridge, made himself a scholar, and earned a Fellowship to study at St. John’s.

George Austen took the traditional Oxford course, the classics, which would later be called “Greats.” (I just got a copy of The History of the University of Oxford, Volume V, 18th Century, from a used book store in England to give me a better feel for what Oxford was like when the Austens were there. I want to know how old the students were and what their lectures or tutorials were like and what was expected of them, and how the city felt. I believe the Oxford colleges were primarily producing clergy then, and they were still burning heretical books in the courtyard of the Bodleian Library. But whose books were they burning in 1747?)

Further generations of Austens would follow George to St. John’s, founded in 1555 by Sir Thomas White. Mrs. Austen, Cassandra, was a descendant of Sir Thomas White’s sister, and thus the Austen children and grandchildren qualified for Founder’s Fellowships, if they were available. So a succession of brothers and nephews and great-nephews went to St. John’s (which wouldn’t begin admitting women until the 1980’s).

George Austen’s later life would be far removed from this realm. After he married, he became rector in one country parish and then another, ran a small farm, tended his growing family, and opened a boarding school for boys out of the Austen homestead, where he began their classical endeavors. He would go on to make sermons for people who must have been little educated, worry about the price of pigs, constantly attempt to make limited ends meet, and agonize over adopting his son Edward out to his childless cousins.

But in 1747 George Austen was a scholar. He did a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts and returned for a Bachelor of Divinity degree, also working at the school in various capacities (as assistant chaplain, dean of arts, Greek lecturer), where he became known as “the handsome proctor.” It’s thought that he and young Cassandra Leigh first met in Oxford, perhaps when she was visiting her uncle Theophilus.

If this is where George and Cassandra fell in love, perhaps in some ways, this is the best place to start.

9: Meaning

2005-12-06T11:15:00.000-05:00

“Wow. This looks amazing. You should look at this.” My roommate Sandy and I were in church, killing time in the foyer waiting for Bev to finish at the welcome table, which seemed to have mysteriously swallowed her, because she was nowhere to be seen. Sandy was looking at a brochure for summer school in Oxford at Wycliffe Hall. The week-long course offered classes on the historical Jesus, Martin Luther, the Sermon on the Mount, and the apologetics of C.S. Lewis. Tours in the afternoon, punting, pubbing, and parks. I picked up a brochure with the realization that it would probably require something of me.

When I studied it later, in my home office, I felt like life was giving me a challenge I had to accept. I was trying to sort out the possibilities of life, working and dreaming to try to ensure that sans husband and children, my life would still somehow be significant. Oxford, grad school, studying theology – these were things I dreamt about as an avenue to meaning, an answer to the unexpected aloneness of my journey. I felt a need to study the historical and cultural setting of the New Testament, to find the basis for understanding the so many important things that get lost in the evangelical church today as we focus on the specific meaning of the Greek words, often with a complete lack of understanding of the culture they were written to. Perhaps this was God’s intention in keeping me single. Perhaps this was my meaning. I had always wanted to live overseas, and Oxford seemed romantic and real from an educational standpoint, real in a way my evangelical-college work wasn’t.

So when I read the brochure I was willed out the door with a determination to investigate this possible source of meaning for my life. Nothing life-changing, but a small step. And I thought I could take a week or ten days after the course in Oxford to follow Austen’s life through the English countryside.

That “week or ten days” quickly became two, and then three weeks, so that by the time I got on the British Airways flight for London in the beginning of July, I was leaving on a month-long journey – in search of adventure, love, and Jane Austen.

8: Blossoms

2005-12-01T13:55:00.000-05:00

If nothing else, I knew I could be brave. I went to counseling. I gave myself permission to feel the badness of it all. I reached out to friends. I learned things about myself that I didn’t want to know – that I could be passive aggressive, that I was holding other people responsible for my emotional well being. I decided to give myself grace and determined to change.

I went to a specialist, who found a thyroid imbalance that had been kicked off by the virus four years before. He gave me a prescription and very slowly I began to feel better. I got more rest and had fewer lost days.

I saved thousands of dollars and determined to leave my job and write for at least a year, to see if I could make it. I started going to an Anglican church that I loved. I started to date again – a blind date, a guy I asked out, a guy I asked out because he wouldn’t stop talking (always a bad sign), a friend who flew up from South Carolina. I was in so many ways out of my comfort zone, forcing myself to engage with the world again, to try. Within six months, I was, if not a new person, at least I had worked my way into a new perspective on life, with hope and possibilities, with a more independent me I rather liked.

In January I gave my notice. In February I walked away from meetings and coffee breaks and lunch breaks and paid vacation and health insurance to the gloriously terrifying world of writing fulltime.

I felt like the jasmine plant in my sunroom that nearly died from lack of water and then sprouted blossoms on dead-looking branches – there I sat, blooming – an escapee from depression, having willed my way into a new life, having stepped off the cliff into freelance hell only to find it daunting but very, very good. I was still terrified. But I loved life. Like blossoms that were completely unexpected.

7: Hopelessness (cont.)

2005-11-30T13:29:00.000-05:00

It had been years since I felt at home in a church – since my family group, the Bible study that I worshipped with and backpacked through Grand Canyon and Glacier with had fallen apart. None of us were comfortable anymore in our church, the church I grew up in. We still firmly believed but had developed a distaste for the trappings that came with faith – the obligatory political conservatism, the focus on church involvement over engaging the world, the guilt trips, the failure to understand or appreciate artistic approaches to truth. We called ourselves “The Inquisitors” after the Dostoevsky story that was one of the first our reading group tackled – in retrospect, ironically apt. We judged the church harshly and went in search of new ways to express our faith and, in the process, bickered and lost each other.

I felt unmoored. I found a new church. I helped a bit with a “postmodern” service the church leaders cancelled because it wasn’t reaching enough non-Christians. I went to a singles Bible study with dreadful hours of teaching about Calvinism. I continued to go on Sundays because my faith – my relationship with God – was incredibly important to me, but I felt like I couldn’t relate to most of the people there, and wondered if they could understand me – sad, struggling to believe.

I longed for a life outside the stuffy, sickly sweet and often non-intellectual spirituality of the evangelical Christian culture. I hated that I had gone to a Christian college, worked for Christian organizations. I began to feel that any group of professional Christians would provide unexpectedly stellar examples of incompetence and, at times, pure meanness. I wanted out. I desperately wanted to go back and re-write my life – to go to a state school, get a masters, study abroad, survive in the “real” world.

I had not married – as a somewhat conflicted semi-feminist, I had dreamed of and planned for and wanted marriage since I was a lanky, brown-skinned girl winning faux beauty contests at friends’ birthday parties. I realized in my twenties that I couldn’t let this disappointment define my life – and even wrote a somewhat successful book for Christian singles about choosing contentment and learning to thrive in an unexpectedly single life – but I still ached for the meaning and compassion a husband would provide, for the chance to make my own family.

And then there was the writing career that seemed impossible. I had been freelancing for years, had published the book, spoken to singles groups around the country. If anything, I felt the writing was my gift, but trying to write and speak and dream about these possiblities in addition to my fulltime job was more than my worn-out self could handle. I had started saving hundreds of dollars from each paycheck, but the economics of freelancing seemed impossible and I wondered how depressing it would be to try to sit at home and write and attempt to earn a living.

Everything in my life was dark, stifling. I needed light and air.