Mary is struggling with her feelings towards Joseph and the desires of her mother who wants her to marry well. She puts the question to God and asks him what he will have her do. The following excerpt is an example of the way she searches for the answer and is reflecting on if it really is her heavenly father speaking to her or the desires of heart. I find it fascinating to read the way other people interpret and look for answers to their prayers. Even more so, I love the thoughts given at the end that pertain to little children in their innocence. When my baby son keeps me awake at 3am I look into his precious eyes and can feel the spirit pouring out from heaven. It really is a beautiful, peaceful, loving feeling that brings tears to my eyes, even now as I type, exhausted from a restless night of little sleep.

(page 51-52)...The stars continued to dance and blaze in a fashion at once friendly and remote. There was naught but the dry rattle of the vines in the breeze, the soughing and gentle threshing of the palms and the olive trees beyond. Sometimes, when she was very young, she had felt such an intensity of communion with the unknown, inconceivable presence, that it had seemed to her that she had actually heard it speak. "Mary...Mary!..." Even at times as if a majestic yet infinitely tender hand had touched her hair, her cheek...

Yes, to distinguish the true from the false. To know the actuality from the dream. yet when the first breath one drew in the morning belonged to God, when no morsel was eaten without first asking his blessing, when it was he who ruled not only the universe but the smallest fragment of your life- how was it possible that he did not draw literally close to you at times? Flow in and through and around you, making you even more fully one with him? And that he did not move you so deeply in so doing that you felt his almighty hand upon you, heard the impossible voice speak?

She could not express it. There were no words in which to make this mystery plain. But dumbly, blindly, beautifully, the unreasonable conviction remained. Jahveh did love and communicate with his children. Perhaps only the very young children who were sufficiently pure and simple to be receptive to his touch. Those who were not yet corrupted by the emotions that beset us as we grow older- jealousy and worry and selfishness. And the desires that lashed her even now as she stood by the sill, striving for peace...

She longed to be a little child again, untouched by the pains of her womanhood. She longed with a sharp nostalgia for the blessed peace of the presence of God. "Thy will be done," she whispered one final time. "In this matter of Joseph, let me only obey."