I once read a book...

My daughter was in the fifth grade when she brought a library book home from school and laid it on the counter in the double-wide mobile home in which we lived at the time.  I picked it up, casually started reading, and couldn't put it down.  
I finished it that same day.  
The book  was entitled, "Are You There God?  It's Me, Margaret" by Judy Blume.   
It was about a pre-adolescent girl raised in a non-religious home who went searching for God.  I really don't know why the book, written for young folks, appealed so much to me; I wasn't searching for God.  He was right there and I knew it.  
As Rachel brought home other Judy Blume books, I read some of those, too.  One, I recall, was about a young boy who was overweight.  All the Blume books were good, but none grabbed me like that first one I read.  
The book had such an influence on me that God and I have an inside joke about it.  
(He gets it, in case you're wondering.)  
After certain kinds of days, I'll crawl into bed at night, give a sigh, and say, "Are You there God?  It's me, Margaret."  
God and I both have a chuckle, and I go to sleep knowing that tomorrow things will work out just fine.  
Whatever Heaven is like (and I really hope there's some green grass and flowers and Jersey cows there, because gold doesn't appeal to me) I see myself standing at the gate saying, "Are You there God...."  
Hopefully he'll chuckle and say, "Come on in; and by the way, your name is Donna, not Margaret." 


Thank you, Judy Blume, for writing a book that has stuck with me since 1980.