"Like every believer I know, my search for real life has led me through at least three distinct seasons of faith, not once or twice but over and over again. Jesus called them finding life, losing life, and finding life again, with the paradoxical promise that finders will be losers while those who lose their lives for his sake will wind up finding them again. In Greek the word is psyche, meaning not only "life" but also the conscious self, the personality, the soul. You do not have to die in order to discover the truth of this teaching, in other words. you only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live."

- Barbara Brown Taylor, "Leaving Church"

I like this because it makes all life stories, dramatic or not, part of the process of finding life, losing life, and finding life again.

I've experienced this to be true.