One of my favorite writers, Dr. Peter Kreeft, is fond of quoting Rabbi Abraham Herschel. The quote? “The man who has not suffered–what does he know, anyway?”

This is a deep truth: the truth that our sufferings and trials make us, in a real sense, who we are. They reveal who we are.

Dennis Prager sometimes says that he doesn’t think you can know a person until he is tested. I think is true, for sure.

I mentioned yesterday a period of 18 months after I left religious life when I felt disoriented, confused, and, to a degree, depressed.

While many questions and challenges remained, the worst of the disorientation lifted for me after a silent retreat, when–after days with God that reminded me starkly of the monastery–I understood that He was telling me that I was going through a trial. I was “passing.”

• I wasn’t passing perfectly , not by a long shot
• But I was pressing on in life
• I was clinging to prayer and striving to walking with God through my darkness
• That was passing
• And I should take joy and peace in that

Now, three years after leaving the monastery, I can look back on those first eighteen months and see so much.

• I can see how God used me in ways He never could have in religious life, as beautiful as religious life is
• I have PROOF of His faithfulness and power in my most vulnerable and grief-stricken moments
• I can see how that trial has taught me things and strengthened me in ways I never would have thought.

It gives me a new perspective on my characters in the fight for their lives and the fight for hope in a magical civil war that really takes them to their limits.

Read my latest posts below, and mark your calendars for the release of “The Crimson League: The Fight for Hope” on June 15!

• Doing the grunt work feels thankless . . . but it’s actually magical
• What the pícaro?
• A look into an author’s mind a week before launch day
• What the graveyard scene in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” taught me about high stakes action scenes
• Character Spotlight: Zalski Forzythe, because everyone loves a good villain