the Apostle Paul that we were the chiefest of sinners, while simultaneously declaring that God had given us the most righteousness and insisting that the world obey our understanding. Our position was inherently arrogant and full of hubris, but we felt humble.
Between my conversations with the reporter, with all of the new Westboro converts, with outsiders on Twitter, and with C.G. on the back side of the Words With Friends game board, my growing doubts were crowded out by eternal justification. My attempts to convince them of our piety served to focus my attention on the aspects of the church that made life there so large and extraordinary. The camaraderie. The sense of family and belonging. The wonderful and smart and kind and generous and supportive church members. And the incredible feeling of being in a large group of people functioning almost seamlessly, as one, doing meaningful work as the earthly representatives of the Creator of all mankind. We weren’t just holding signs on street corners. We were preaching the standards of God, “maintaining and defending pure Gospel truth,” as Gramps always said from the pulpit. The Wars of the Lord.
“I’m here because I want to be here,” I told the Star reporter. “Because I believe these things. Because I love these words.”
My regular conversations with C.G. had ended two months earlier, but he sent me a message the day that the profile was published.
“She has no real friends,” the article read. “Few acquaintances. The majority of her outside interactions comes with the people—journalists, mostly—who stop by to profile the family.”
With characteristic brevity, C.G.’s response was a link to a video clip on YouTube. The farewell scene of Dances with Wolves. Sitting horseback atop a snowy cliff is a Native American called Wind In His Hair. He had initially been hostile to the man leaving the tribe via a trail far below the cliff—a white soldier who became known as Dances With Wolves—but now yells out to him in the Lakota language: “Dances With Wolves! I am Wind In His Hair. Do you see that I am your friend? Can you see that you will always be my friend?” Shouting it from the mountaintop, as it were.
My heart soared, and it made me ashamed. I stifled the feeling as soon as I could, steeling myself with the words that concluded the profile:
“I’m all in.”
* * *
In C.G.’s absence, I threw myself back into the work of the church and found an even greater sense of my place within the body. By visceral instinct more than conscious deliberation, I understood that no force silences doubt as effectively as zeal—a passionate clinging to familiar and reliable truths that quiets dissonance and snuffs out uncertainty in an avalanche of action. I was eager to be useful to fellow church members in every way that I could, and my obedience was rewarded with a deluge of tenderness from my loved ones. My twenty-sixth birthday arrived in January with a “text bomb”—the coordinated arrival of dozens of messages from church members, all popping up on my screen at once. My mother had implemented the practice for Westboro birthdays a few years earlier, but the outpouring of love was overwhelming this time.
The message from my dear friend and cousin Jael began: “Dear MegHeart, I have never known a better friend than you.”
From my beloved Gran: “Dear little Meg, you have always been a sweet, precious child; & for many years, a faithful & loving servant to our Lord! Gramps & I love you very much! Happy Birthday! You are GREATLY blessed!” She was eighty-six, but had learned to use emojis on her iPhone, her message sprinkled with happy faces and flowers and musical notes.
My mother wrote the story of my life in a series of tweets, which I copied into a Field Notes, fixing her typos as I always did:
Twenty-six years ago, God loaned us a baby girl. She’s comforted us always. We had great hopes for her and called upon the Lord for wisdom to teach her.
Her dad and I had only ONE hope for her: That she would have a tender heart from God, toward Him and His word, and that she would serve His people!
God moved us to sanctify her in her comings and goings, and to teach her line upon line and precept upon precept all of His counsel and ways.
Our little MeganPhelps has evidence of grace from God and loving kindness, showing a work of God upon her heart, causing obedience