God, what is it like to be You and hear all those people all the time everywhere, begging, imploring, calling out for anything and anyone?

That process by which you become a writer is a pretty lonely one. We don't have a group apprenticeship like a violinist might training for an orchestra.

The human heart is my school.

I had many wonderful experiences, received beautiful letters, and my Christian books received substantive and thoughtful reviews. But there was always argument, dispute, questions as to what I "really" believed, lectures from here and there on "the real truth," etc.

We are not damned. We never were. Who under the sun has the right to damn any living breathing creature?

And so this young one, this young one whom I had so loved, I had to forsake, no matter how broken my heart, no matter how lonely my soul, no matter how bruised my intellect and spirit.

Would that death were like this. Would that one would sleep and sleep and sleep forever.