i had this feeling last night that i do when i have a good visit with an old friend. this doesn’t happen to me as often these days as it did when i lived away from arkansas. someone would come for a few days and we would just talk and talk and talk, drink coffee, venture out in the beautiful rainy, green that is the incredible pacific northwest. then, inevitably, i would put them on a plane and drive home wistfully with my babies. that is exactly how i felt last night when i finished anne lamott’s new book, grace (eventually). do go and buy it. if you’re standing in the bookstore trying to decide by reading one chapter if you really want to own this book, read nudges (p.107). when i started reading anne, her son was a baby. now he’s 17 and i feel like he’s a distant nephew of mine, like i should send him a graduation present or something. i just love that she writes with the kind of honesty that makes you feel like you’re a part of her life. i know that has been said over and over about her, but it is really distinctive to be that authentic. (although one of the funniest lines i read yesterday was, “all i can say is, thank God there are no live feeds of our minds streaming online.”) a lot of my favorite anne lamott quotes are when she’s quoting her friends, like her friend father tom, “when i ask father tom where we find God in this present darkness, he said that God is in creation, and to get outdoors as much as you can.” or her pastor, veronica, who said, “i’m only a beggar, showing the other beggars where the bread is.”

one of the things i would like to learn from anne is that when she is going a little bit crazy in the head, she calls for help. she involves other people in her story all the time. in one story, when she has done something of which she is ashamed, she calls a friend, waking her up and tells her the whole story. it’s a confession, really…which is something we evangelicals shy away from…confessing our sins, out loud, to another actual person who might say, “you did what!” this is what she says about it.

she did not say much, but let me get my guck into the air, so it was no longer in the anaerobic rat chamber of my mind. and as i told her my bleak and embarrassing story, it felt like dirty clothes. i’d been trying to wash and dry it inside myself, in my embarrassed mind, which doesn’t really make much sense, laundry-wise. when you hang things outside, they get air, warmth, light; and you see that even with the stains and frayed collar, the garment has kept you covered and warm for a long time.