When you were born and raised in the world that I was, there is a lot you can take for granted, including the certainty that everything you believe in is true. But breaking that appetite for certainty is the *only* way any of us is going to be able to give love, create beauty and find peace.
I escaped the Evangelical World for some place far less crazy: Hollywood. There I made four low-budget movies that you might catch on late-night cable. Then I wrote a novel called Portofino which got some pretty great reviews and gave me permission to continue to be a writer. I had found, it seemed, something I was actually good at, as opposed to making these second-rate movies or my work in The God Business™. Then I wrote a book with my son about the Marine Corps and the meaning of service called Keeping Faith, which became a best-seller and got me in the chair with Oprah. But the whole time I was putting off telling *my* story, which I finally told in Crazy for God. That’s when I got an email from Christopher Hitchens.
Early in my life, because of the family I was born and raised in, I was fairly certain about the kind of life I intended to live, and how I was prepared to measure success. But it wasn’t until I was just another one of the young mothers picking up my babies from school that I realized how wrong I’d been.
