Those who know me well know that it’s rare that I find myself at a loss for words. But, truly, this is where I find myself with this blog entry. I had an amazing opportunity today to have lunch with William Paul Young, Author of The Shack.

I surprised my 12 year old daughter (about to turn 13 in two weeks!) by picking her up from school to join us at lunch which had been arranged by my friend, Erik (he’s behind the camera in the picture above). She has just finished reading The Shack and, just yesterday, finished her own blog review of the book; which, for a 12 year old, was really good (although it is a spoiler – if you haven’t read the book, don’t read it). She has dreams of being an author herself one day and was completely blown away by the experience.

If you’ve read my blog entry about The Shack, you know I love the book and it deeply impacted my life. In reading the book, you can’t help but understand that the author himself had come to a place of deep understanding of God’s love; a place that can only be found through deep turmoil. To get to this place of beauty from a place of deep anquish, is something that I’ve admired about Paul since reading the book for the first time.

After meeting him today, I can say there’s much more that I admire about him than just his ability to put pen to paper and draw a beautiful portrait of God. Here are a few things about Paul that came across immediately:

• God has truly done a work in his life. You can see and feel the love of Jesus all about him.
• He genuinely loves to meet people. He immediately hugged both Kristan & I and made us feel that he was not just giving his time for this lunch, but that he was truly looking forward to it and glad to be there… with us.
• He’s humbled and grateful for the experiences that the book has brought into his life.

I loved our conversation about the book, its impact, its criticism and those things in life that he gets to enjoy because God brought him on this journey. I loved how he described the writing of the book as a gift he intended for his 6 children that God graciously took and gave as a gift to His children, as well.

I asked him how he was growing, changing or being blessed since the book and his answer was that the thing he enjoys the most is seeing the life transformation in people and being able to share in their stories. He told an amazing story of a woman from Canada who was in the pit of life, ready to take her own life. When she read The Shack, it became her lifeline and God gave Paul the opportunity to help walk her back to a place where she can begin to heal. Papa is doing a beautiful, continuing work in her life. I won’t retell the story, because it’s not mine to tell. I hope one day he tells it in detail on his blog, it’s truly transformational.

All in all, I can say it was a genuine pleasure to spend some time enjoying a Ted’s bison burger and great conversation with Paul. He was a joy to talk with and spent as much time being interested in our story and asking questions of Kristan as we were in his.

There’s so much that I will take with me from this experience, the most important is still this – Papa is especially fond of me … and you.

Wrapped up in love,