The Conditions of Will

by Jessa Hastings

But that’s not how pain works… You ignore it and it just sinks down deeper. It lodges itself in the corners of our memories, hangs off tree branches

“That God that my mom thinks she serves—he’s so much smaller than who I think the real one is. The real one—to me, he’s everywhere, in everything. And sure, maybe he speaks through the Bible. But also maybe he speaks through Narnia, and Harry Potter despite J. K. Rowling lately, and the trees, and science, and the stars, and black holes and the ocean and the way the sky looks sometimes, and you can feel it in your chest.”

“And I don’t think they’re not letting your mom into heaven because she didn’t believe in the God that modern Christianity claims to represent. I think he’s good.” I shrug. “And I think he loves everyone, and he wants everyone to be okay, and I think almost everyone who is, like, earnestly seeking God—people aren’t seeking that out of ego; they’re looking for the meaning of life and they’re looking beyond themselves for it—and,

There are a lot of kinds of love in the world, and not all of them make sense all of the time.

I don’t shy away from people because they’ve made mistakes. Mistakes make you human. The worst thing you could ever be to me is a liar.