and quiet on the forty-five-minute drive through the darkness back to Deadwood. With Grace sprawled across the backseat, her hair strewn across my lap as I scratched her head, I pondered my doubts and tried to make sense of what it all meant.
MEGAN: Chad. Is the Bible just another book? One with beautiful language and compelling stories—but not divine? Like reading David Foster Wallace’s speech at Kenyon College and being moved (to feeling, to action) via words like “on fire with the same force that lit the stars”—but not thinking he’s God or speaks for God or that every word he says has to be obeyed?
But as he’d done so many times since I left Westboro, Chad declined to share his thoughts on the question with me. We could speak of music and movies, tech and television, but when it came to matters of belief, he would change the subject instead of offering an opinion. I found it frustrating, but I understood why he did it. I hadn’t been so malleable since I was a child, and he was taking great pains to avoid unduly influencing me. He wanted to know where my own heart and thoughts would lead me. If I was going to grow out of the mental and emotional boundaries that had so long characterized my existence—the bounds of my habitation—I would need to forge my own path.
* * *
I awoke before dawn one morning in early January, my left hand still protectively covering my phone beneath the pillow. Like most nights, I had fallen asleep texting Chad. And like most mornings, I would begin my day stalking my family on Twitter.
Within days of my departure from Westboro, several members of the church had proactively blocked me from viewing their posts on the platform. I had created a fake account in response, one whose sole use would be following—but never engaging—every account associated with the church. I recognized Twitter as the only real window into my family’s lives and daily activities. They might be holding signs in every photo, but where else could I see my parents and siblings? How else could I know what they were up to?
Not even I thought this was a particularly healthy habit for me to cultivate—like Emily in Our Town, reliving the days of her former existence—and in the beginning, I had tried to limit the time I spent staring into the past at my old life. Now, I didn’t even make the attempt. I understood that it would be pathetic and sad to spend my days watching other people live via social media, a waste of the new life and freedom I now had. Still, whenever I encountered resistance from Grace, Newbery, Libby, even Dustin and Laura, I justified the time I spent with a new hope taking root inside me:
What if someone could get through to them?
While it was tempting to despair that Westboro would ever change, I couldn’t forget the obvious counterpoint: that I had changed. I had been zealous, dedicated, and absolutely convinced of our cause. True, I had spent my final months at the church trying without success to change their hearts and minds—but if I could be convinced, it stood to reason that others could be, as well. Part of my motive was undeniably selfish: I was desperate to have my loved ones back in my life, to lose the howling pain that held my insides in a vise grip. But it was becoming clear that this wasn’t the only reason we should try to persuade church members away from their views.
Like the rest of the country, I had watched in horror at the news coverage of the December shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I knew what my family would say, but I was still saddened and dismayed to watch the scene play out the way it had so many times before: an eruption of tweets and news releases pouring salt into the gaping wounds of the victims’ families, celebrating the mass murder of first-graders as the condign wrath of God, and vowing to protest the memorials. PRAY FOR MORE DEAD KIDS, the sign read. My relief at not participating was tempered by distress at the number of times I had done exactly the same—and to more families than I could guess. I couldn’t undo anything I’d done, but didn’t I have a responsibility to do something? If Grace and I could find a way to convince our family to change their minds, or