The Girl Got Up

"And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about . . .
At this they were overcome with amazement." (Mark 5:42)

The Girl Got Up is a spiritual memoir, or as Rachel Srubas says, "retrospection with an eye toward the eternal." Though it is, to be sure, a resurrection memoir, it is also heartbreakingly cruciform. Srubas refuses to recount her getting up before an honest account of being brought low, of the breaking of her spirit. Blending personal narrative with scriptural wisdom, she offers shining new insights into the nature of childhood, spiritual awakening, sexuality, sin, love, marriage, scapegoating, Christian compassion, the proclamation of Christ's resurrection, and more.

No pious abstractions or how-to cheeriness here. Srubas faces life with a striking blend of realism, intelligence, and steely faith. The Girl Got Up is a unique testament to the God who grants us freedom, lets us fall, and yet never fails to raise us up.

Rachel M. Srubas is the author of City of Prayer: Forty Days with Desert Christians (Liturgical Press, 2008) and Oblation: Meditations on St. Benedict's Rule (Paraclete Press, 2006). She is a regular contributor to Give Us This Day and Weavings. She is an oblate of the Order of St. Benedict, a spiritual director, and a Presbyterian minister living in Tucson, Arizona.