I’d been meeting the girls at the Sunday night service for nine weeks when one night all the tumblers seemed to fall into place and a huge door opened up in me. Paul said at the end of his message, “So what it comes down to is this: meaning or no meaning, purpose or pointlessness. Do you want to recognize the fact that there is a reason for being here, for getting up every morning and breathing and working and hanging out with people, or do you want to just shrug your shoulders and say, ‘Whatever. Life just happens; you’re born, you live, you die, that’s it’? But before you answer, realize that there is meaning, there is purpose. If you don’t want to admit it, that’s your choice, but choosing that doesn’t make it true.”

That got to me. I was almost angry at Paul for being so challenging, but as his words sank in I felt the logic of them. There was a truth that I wasn’t facing. I was just skirting it, poking at it now and then with some intellectual jousts, but not really engaging myself in grappling with it. I’d heard it every Sunday night, in one form or another, for nine weeks. I’d seen Missy and Taylor and Joy live it in their actions and words, in the way they treated me and each other, and in the indescribable kind of life they seemed to have. The only thing standing between me and what they had was my acceptance of it and my willingness to give myself to it. No, not it. Him. God.

At the end of the service Paul prayed and invited anyone who wanted to accept this truth to echo his prayer in their own heart and mind. I did a mental inventory of myself to see if there was anything holding me back, and a part of me really wanted to find something. But there wasn’t. I prayed with him, the first time I’d prayed with a specific recipient of my prayer in mind, and was filled with a heat and wild energy that felt as though it threatened to levitate me above my chair. The service ended, the lights came up, and I looked with amazement to Missy, not knowing what I was going to say. My face must have given me away because she suddenly had tears in her eyes. “Grace,” she laughed, “you’re practically glowing!” I nodded and found I couldn’t speak, my throat was so tight with tears. She threw her arms around me, and we laughed and cried and grabbed at Taylor and Joy to tell them I finally understood, I finally got it. I believed.

“Uh … believed what?”