Welcome to Lucid Renewal*, a place for Christians to think and read and share, a place for struggling savants and major mess-ups.
I’m Anastacia, and I call this my writing home, a Christian blog, a place where I explore the contradictions of life and ask you to travel with me as I examine my own thoughts, emotions, and habits.
My mother named me Anastacia Eppie Pattillo with my first name originating from the Greek word anastasis meaning resurrection. My middle name, Eppie, is taken from my great-great-grandmother who died just before I was born and was a beloved matriarch of the family. And Pattillo is of Scottish origins and from a family with a long history in the South. I’ve been trying to live up to the whole package my entire life.
I am a single mom raising two boys, and we spend much time with a rather large extended family. For my day job, I teach as a high school English teacher in a rural school, and we make our home in a tiny town not far from there, a place surrounded by limestone quarries and farmland. It is here that the real thinking happens, where I discover the quandaries of a rational mind meeting the untidiness of motherhood and the bittersweet hours of teaching. It is here where I ask, seek, and knock. And sometimes I hear Him, but more often His voice is a whisper or a silence that echoes, and then I only see the edges of His ways.
And so, against a background of country roads and working-class values, I spend time-consuming books, playing with ideas, and trying to live a real life full of mercy and grace. I invite you to join me as we make our way together.
*Thank you to Tulisha Scott for honing in on the word “lucid.”
