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I was raised by a woman who had been widowed at age 26—my dad died of polio—and was left with these two boys. Her whole goal in parenting was to shelter us from the world. We weren't allowed to play outside of the front yard. We couldn't go roller-skating, because it looked like dancing. We couldn't even join the Boy Scouts. And the whole idea was to just get through life and hope like crazy that Jesus would come back to get you out of this evil world.

Early on, the worst thing the church did was give me a misconception of what God was like. I've been trying to overcome that ever since. But now the blinds are open, and I realize that part of my purpose as a writer is to open the blinds and make sense of the world for others.

And how has opening the blinds changed the way you live?

Ever since the blinds were opened, ever since I was allowed to play outside the front yard, I wanted to play everywhere! I love risk. I run marathons and climb mountains. My goal is to climb every 14,000-foot mountain here in Colorado. The experience of having the blinds opened has been amazing. The world is there. And it's God's world, and it's a good world. That's been the theme in my life since I've been set free.

What would people be surprised to discover about your life as a writer?

They would probably be surprised to know how boring most of a writer's life is. Sure, you get to travel a bit and do interviews in magazines or on the radio. But that's the artificial side; that's not the real life. The real life of a writer, for me, is an isolated, paranoid sort of existence. [He laughs.] I cannot write with someone in the room. People write to me and say, "I'd like to be your intern; can I come watch you write?" No way! I have to be alone, and when I get into that zone of writing, I eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for weeks at a time. I don't want to think about anything else but the writing part. So I'll go away on a writing retreat and spend five days in a row alone, writing. Then I'll take a break for a couple of days and start over again. When I was working on Prayer last year, I did this for about 12 weeks in a row.

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