I have to stop reading, but I can’t.  It is too raw and real and familiar, but at the same time, it is inevitable that I should walk her path and learn her truth.  Finding yourself underneath the layers that others have built on top of you for their own reasons is the hardest thing to do.  That is Tara’s story, and it is my story. There are so many parallels, it feels as though she is me and I am her. Her complex emotions and relationships bring my pain to the surface. She tells my story. How can I keep reading? How can I stop?

She left the church.  She couldn’t fit.  Will I fit?  Will I lose everything like the one who sold all for the pearl of great price, the one thing that is indispensable, my own soul?  How can I?  How can I do otherwise?

Life in a fallen world is a cycle of birth and death.  The caterpillar is constantly growing and shedding old skins.  What was once new and alive becomes dead and confining.  The future is unknown to the small creeping thing until one day the chrysalis opens and it flies to its destiny among the clouds.

I am a babe upon my Savior’s knee.  Who am I to say what my destiny is and where he will set my feet?  If he tells me to go, as Abraham went, to seek a better way, to find him anew, I will go.  Still, I feel as though I am stepping into a dark void.  The darkness surrounds me like an inky blanket, my brain groping for certainty like a mountain climber in a free fall. 

Marvelous are the ways of my God!  He will not fail to give me support.  He searches for me in the darkness of my afflictions.  The lamb cries out and the shepherd will come without fail.  He has engraven me upon the palms of his hands and he will not forget.  The one who takes note of the sparrow’s fall will not leave me comfortless.  Oh Lord guide my steps and those of my sisters who walk my path in these troubled days.  We are of more worth than many sparrows.  Thou that seeth the value of all things knoweth the worth of the souls of thy daughters, and thy heart is moved with compassion at our tears.  Our prayers are not lost to the void, but do rise to the height of thy halls and echo within thy chambers.  Let thy mighty hand be made bare!  Let thy daughters rise up and put on their beautiful garments.  Let not our oppressors know victory, but let them taste defeat!  Let them know that there is a God in Israel and he has the power to save!