Sublime

After two weeks, Rachel was no longer so sure. The food bag was still half full. In fact, it seemed a little heavier than it had been when she’d first made her bargain.

She had been stricken from her marriage, rendered near penniless by the events, and was now an older and disregarded woman. It’s a harrowingly common feeling, even if the details of her experience and solution are particular. We women age, eyes sweep over us in obvious disregard, our moments of confusion are mocked, our knowledge makes us schoolmar

Just imagine the many Maryas who have existed, all over the world, their best selves sacrificed to exigency, whose grace suffered under the pressure of being poorly suited to the toil required of them to make a living. (Maybe, like me, you’ve been one of them yourself.)

An angular scrawl was all that was left of her beautiful curling signature, but it was soon recognized and loved all over Haarlem.

Poor Dorothea before her marriage had never found much room in other minds for what she cared most to say; and she had not, as we know, enjoyed her husband’s superior instruction so much as she had expected.

Throughout this process, I have clung to a quote by C. S. Lewis, where he says, “My argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of unjust and just? A man does not call a line crooked unless he first has some idea of straight. What was I comparing the universe to when I called it unjust?”