How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, death by suicide, illness, and racism.

Budde introduces the call to stay through the example of Anne Tyler’s novel Saint Maybe: After his brother’s death by suicide and other family tragedies, protagonist Ian Bedloe joins the Church of Second Chances, where Reverend Emmett advises him to atone for his sins. Ian takes a menial job to provide for his brother’s family, and when he complains that he feels like he is wasting his life, Reverend Emmett advises him that this is his life and that he must lean into it. Budde states that the decision to stay is as courageous as the decision to go; though the decision to stay can feel like settling, it is instead a commitment to the life that one already has and requires digging deeper into one’s life.

Budde was not much older than Ian when she first read Saint Maybe, and like Ian, she felt stagnant in her life. She was working a full-time job that she didn’t always love and living in Ohio with her husband and small child. She loved her life most of the time, but she felt like she couldn’t discuss her occasional feelings of dissatisfaction.