The slippage started with the language of faith, which I had spoken fluently for a long time. After years of teaching other people what words like “sin,” “salvation,” “repentance,” and “grace” really meant, those same words began to mean less and less to me. When I had first learned them, they had helped me to make sense of the tumult both inside and outside, giving me special names for what was happening as well as a sturdy framework for managing it. Then, so gradually that it is hard to say when things changed, those same words began to sound more like stuffed pillows—things to be placed
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