Judy and Margaret

On my way back to my car from playing pickleball Sunday afternoon, I saw a Little Library, a box where people leave books they have finished reading for others to take. 

There, I found a copy of "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" by Judy Blume, the insanely popular author of teen and tween fiction in the 1970's. I devoured her novels fourth, fifth and sixth grades. 

I picked up "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret." I wondered how it would hold up over time. Would it be a classic? Would it have aged well? Would I cringe at what I thought was brilliant as a child?

I am halfway done, and yes, yes, no. 

Yes it is a classic.

Yes it aged well.

No I didn't cringe at my younger self.

Margaret is a sixth grader in her last year in elementary school. She just moved from NYC to suburban New Jersey with her Jewish dad and her Christian mom. Her new friend Nancy asks her if she is going to join the YMCA or the Jewish Community Center. Margaret -- raised without religion -- doesn't have a clue. In addition to navigating her first crush, first bra, first kiss, and getting her period, she tries to figure out where religion fits in her life. Spoiler: She doesn't find what is she looking for in the organized religions she explores. (This isn't to bash organized religion -- it serves many people.)

What does Margaret do? She prays "to her own personal God," said one review. 

Isn't that an answer to some of the big questions of life? How do we find peace? What should we do when we are lost or confused? What does Margaret do? She prays in her own way to her own God. I spent the last ten years trying to figure it out with meditation and therapy and twelve steps programs and reading Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest with a radical and gentle interpretation of Christianity.

All of those things have been helpful in letting me find peace with a complicated and complex past (and to be honest, complicated and complex present.) 

Here was the answer, in a book I adored when I was twelve.