I was having dinner with a dear wonderful friend (so amazed I can call you my friend, Linda) the other night. And it suddenly struck me anew why I love literature. There are those seasons in our lives where we can't really say what we are feeling. We can't put our finger on it for ourselves, let alone communicate it in a way as to bring another into the midst of it with us, no matter how much we might be longing for a friend to know and help share that burden or heartache. We don't know how to fix it or change it. In these times, it is rare that the right 'teaching' book can be found to help us navigate the season. It can happen, but I feel in these particular (and thankfully rare) seasons, it doesn't happen much. No. It is something more real and more deep in our being than any teaching can quite reach. We need a picture. We need a story, so well crafted in another world that it somehow reaches into the depths of our spirit and heart, and it tells us where we are. I'm amazed by the power of fiction and fantasy. In those seasons, we need the right story to be told us. And somehow, in the midst of being lost in this other world, we learn the lessons and hear just the right words we needed, but could have never known we needed. Those of you who have had this happen, you understand. Those of you who have not yet, I'm not sure I could find any persuasive and eloquent way to open this experience up to you. But I hope to one day write a book that meets you in just one of those seasons, and changes your world. For me right now, it is Alice in Wonderland. Who would have thought that this book of nonsense would speak so much wisdom to my heart? I sat alone in Starbucks, laughing and giggling, over the humor, over the brilliance, over the nonsense, over how much it was speaking to me. She is teaching me lessons I could have never learned from Francis Chan or Watchman Nee. She is teaching them to my heart.