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memoir

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Since I started sharing the story of the Vine, I’ve been blessed by a lot of wonderful feedback and encouragement.Of you’ve been one of the person’s who has reached out to me via facebook, e-mail, or this site, thank you so much. You’re helping me make sense of this joruney.

There are several themes that have emerged pretty consistently since I started hearing from you all, and I’d like to talk about a few of them.

1) For all of you who are wondering, I’m doing okay, really. I think that we are so unused to any degree of personal vulnerability in our culture, (especially from church people and especially from pastors) that many people must assume that if I’m saying this much publicly, I must be a real hot mess privately.

I’m not. That’s not to say that I’m not grieving, that I don’t have good days and bad days, (like all people); I’m simply trying to tell my story as honestly as I can. Sometimes that honesty is just a little messy.

2) I’m not trying to burn any bridges. I don’t have any interest in making anyone look bad (except perhaps myself at times.) I use pseudonyms for all my characters, the stories I share are generally years old, and I test out my level of disclosure with a small circle of readers whose opinions I trust (sometimes those readers tell me to disclose more, sometimes they tell me to disclose less. I listen to them.)

3) I’m glad to see that this story is striking a chord for so many of you. I hope that when you read, you find moments when you laugh, moments that you nod because something similar has happened to you, moments that you feel a little challenged by something I shared.

As a writer, I send words out into a vacuum, hit send, and then see if they touch down anywhere. You let me know that my confessions have meaning that goes beyond myself, so please, continue to share with me.

Thank you all for being a part of this process.

(And my next story touches down on Tuesday.)

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