Back in October, just before I left the blogosphere for my sabbatical, I had something of a breakdown.

What made the breakdown so devastating was that I didn’t see it coming at all. It had been a fairly good week, and I, for the most part, was feeling perfectly happy and content.

And then I made a mistake: I read theology. I read Wesley Hill’s response to James Brownson’s book Bible, Gender, Sexuality, and it felt like the ground vanished beneath me and I went into a terrifying free fall. (I tend to have a bad track record with Wesley Hill’s work. Every time I try to read something of his, I usually end up sobbing in a corner somewhere, not able to breathe.)

Old feelings that I used to struggle with on a daily basis suddenly materialized inside of me – feelings of debilitating unworthiness, fear, shame and anger…