"There are times when you sit down with a book that you enter a world of discovery.

You discover a new author you love.

You discover a story with which you connect.

You discover a world that is simultaneously different than yours yet also feels somehow related to your own life experiences.

This has happened more than once to me, perhaps because I'm prone to immersing myself in stories and surrendering to an author's will. I'm a kinder and gentler reader and reviewer, someone who looks for the good and quite often finds it.

I am not not will I ever likely be a nun. I do not live in an intentional community of any sort nor can I particularly identify with having a fast-paced, high-powered career of any type from which to escape. In some ways, I am nothing like the Sister Monica Clare whose story is found in the pages of "A Change of Habit: Leaving Behind My Husband, Career, and Everything I owned to Become a Nun."

Yet, so immersed did I become in her story that even though her name change doesn't surface until around 2/3 into the book that as I sit here writing I can't for the life of me remember her birth name).

That's a good thing.

Now then, to acknowledge that I do have some common ground with Sister Monica from traumatic, unstable childhoods to a seeming inability to function normally in relationships because there was always something else. I identify with that sense of feeling unsatisfied no matter how satisfied I've become.

"A Change of Habit" is both a simple and remarkable story. It's a story of a woman who knew as a young girl she was called into a spiritual life yet spent many years trying but struggling to live into the expectations of those around her and a culture that has never quite understood the religious life. It is a memoir, of this have no doubt, but it is also a glimpse inside the normalcy of human beings who dedicate themselves to live authentically a life into which few feel called and even fewer respond to that call.

Sister Monica writes beautifully throughout "A Change of Habit" about the feelings that constantly followed her throughout a career that paid the bills but was woefully unsatisfying and a marriage that we all could see, and she could see, was never meant to be. She also writes about the consequences of following a life that one's not called into as she struggled with resolving the debts that could keep her from entering into her religious community and emotionally struggled to surrender to a world where she no longer needed to prove her worth to simply "be."

"A Change of Habit" doesn't romanticize the religious life. In fact, it's portrayed quite realistically from personality foibles to strict rules to the inherent risks of vulnerably serving others who are, in some cases incapable emotionally or physically of knowing how to respond to that care. Yet, along the way we began to deeply appreciate Sister Monica as she moves away from her pop-culture obsessed life into a world where even simple actions like saying "please" and "thank you" can draw admonishment and the more stoic life can make it seem like those around you wish you were gone.

I am seemingly not the target reader for "A Change of Habit." I'm a paraplegic/double amputee born with spina bifida who survived cancer twice in the past year. I'm in my 50s having survived much longer than anyone expected. I work on the management team for a large government agency and am in many ways a world away from the world created in "A Change of Habit." I was raised in what I would now call a cult or close to it (Jehovah's Witnesses) and have spent most of my life trying to undo the damage from being booted from two churches, one because they believed I was gay and one because of a suicide attempt (which was true).

And yet, I am the target reader for "A Change of Habit." I have long believed that I've survived this long because of my faith. I survived childhood traumas, including sexual abuse, because of my childhood faith. I survived the suicide of my wife and death of our newborn because of my faith. I have long felt called into ministry, at times leaning into it with roles in pastoral care, interim ministry, children's ministry, and pulpit fill, but I've never surrendered to it partly because of a body that never cooperates and partly because of the "otherness" created from a lifetime of trauma.

I am, at least in my eyes, a failed seminarian (I graduated, but not with the MDiv that I desired) and I have long questioned if I belong anywhere. Yet, I'm also a longtime activist who has traveled over 6,000 miles in my wheelchair supporting non-profits and I often say that I'm happiest living life at 2-3 miles per hour.

Indeed, I must say that by the end of "A Change of Habit" I felt a certain kinship with the world created by Sister Monica and the ways that she has influenced it especially since growing into the role of Sister Superior. "A Change of Habit," at least for me, planted seeds of appreciation for the world I do live in, messy yet glorious. It helped me recognize gratitude for the life I do live and the ministry I do have even if it's not the ministry I pictured myself having. It helped me appreciate those who give themselves to a deeper spiritual life and who turn away from capitalism, a desire for authority, a desire for power, and other things taught by a society often more focused on "I" than we or than on God.

At times remarkable in its vulnerability and other times quite funny, "A Change of Habit" is a lot things - a wonderful memoir, a powerful spiritual guide, a reminder of the glorious gifts of women in our faith communities, and a gentle nudge for all of us to lean into our authentic selves.

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