The Hired Girl

by Laura Amy Schlitz

But I think the most important thing those books gave me was a kind of faith. My books promised me that life wasn’t just made up of workaday tasks and prosaic things. The world is bigger and more colorful and more important than that.

It thrilled me, that sculpture. For one thing, it reminded me that in my new life, I may have other such experiences. I needn’t always be an ignorant girl. The world will offer itself to me like a chalice brimming with immortal wine, and I will quaff from it.

great works of art are universal, and in them we behold our everyday struggles and homely joys.

Staring at that color, I felt mystified and at the same time contented, as if all I wanted on earth was to go on looking. When we see God face-to-face, we will be fascinated in just that way; I’m sure of it.

I sometimes wonder if every living thing doesn’t need kind words as much as sunshine and water.

Even though taking Him down is a little bit like being persecuted, it isn’t the kind of persecution where babies are torn apart in the street.

Most of the time when you laugh, it’s because something is amiss — clumsy or wrong or sad — but when you laugh at a kitten, you laugh for pure joy.

All three sons believed they had the right ring, but there was no proof they were right. But all three rings were precious and beautiful, because they came from the father, and the father loved all three sons.”

The closest thing that I can say is that the absence of God, at that moment, was the presence of God. I felt it and it was true. It wasn’t what I’d prayed for. It didn’t answer my questions. It wasn’t forgiveness or chastisement or permission. It was just — He was just — God was just — real to me. There was darkness, and the darkness was God. There was absence, and the absence was God. There was my longing, and my longing was God. God wasn’t there, and at the same time I was more certain of Him than I’ve ever been in my life.

That moment, when I was taking up for David, was one of the moments when I was strong.

Once someone reads your diary, you’re never the same again. You realize you’re not alone when you write, and you start to write for the person who will read your words.