WHEN I was a child, God spoke to me. All the time. A continuous dialogue that was as casual and instinctive as breathing. I grew up the daughter of missionaries, former Catholics who converted to a 1970s Jesus-centric Protestant Christianity in Colombia. Turning away from the hierarchy of Catholicism, they raised me to believe that I had a direct line to God and could talk to him whenever I wanted. So I did—in the bathroom, before I went to sleep, out in the backyard playing or climbing the avocado tree.
I developed a kind of game: I would pick up the Bible and hold it closed with my hand on top, and then I would ask a question: Will I pass my test tomorrow? Does Esteban like me? Why is my mom so unhappy with me? Then I would close my eyes and flip open the Bible to a random page and read out loud the first words I saw. The verses often made no sense, but I treated them
