On my way back to my in-laws’ house, I drove past our old house and drove through the church parking lot—something I hadn’t done since the last time I was there with my family, more than three years earlier. I drove slowly, soaking it in, absorbing it. I know that building, that parking lot, those walls and floors and ceilings as well as I know my own face in a mirror, and it felt right to bring myself back to it, to breathe it in, to lower my defenses long enough to allow the flood of memories to rush back in, many of them so good, so meaningful. Something shifted on this visit, the longest
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