After thinking about things and this story, and after some prayer, I've decided that I haven't finished the story like I thought. Sure, that is all that I'm going to say about Telk, but that doesn't mean that I'm finished just yet. If you don't understand what I'm saying, perhaps you will in a minute.

Katriel said something about "having the patience to finish the story" when I realized that it's really the courage to tell you the rest of it.

There is a very good reason why when I started this story, that I decided I would end it there, and that is because the mission Telk is now on is one that will take a lifetime, it is one that will never end, and it is one that I am now traveling on.

There is a reason why I called this story what I did, and that is because if you were to take out the d in the title and replace it with an i, and rearrange the letters in a certain way, you would get my legal name.

This story is a story about Telk finding what was missing in his life, but more importantly, this story is a story about me, perhaps not directly, and I never claimed that it was autobiographical, but it's about me none the less. I felt like that once, I felt completely lost and empty and alone, and I didn't even have a really good reason for it, I couldn't pinpoint it to one event or one choice or anything like other people, I couldn't even pinpoint the day or year that I started feeling like that, it was just a slow downward climb.

Like Telk, I didn't know why I felt so empty, and so I tried everything I could think of, no, I didn't try drugs, but I turned to my writings and my books and I let it suck me in, and I let it take over me, but it sucked everything out of me.

I didn't have any pinpoint of a moment like Telk where I came to an understanding and my emptiness all melted away, I just looked back one day and realized that it was gone, that I had finally let Jesus into my life after being a churchgoer for all my life. I've been a churchgoer all my life, but I've been a Christian only for two or three years. You'd think it would have taken me less time to find Him, but alas, like many churchgoers, I confused being a good girl and doing what I was told and believing in Christ for "fire insurance" with having a relationship with Him. I didn't know I was missing anything because I thought that that was it, that church equaled Christian, I didn't think that consciously, but I believed it anyway. And I also didn't think that being a Christian involved growing, I thought once you reached faith that was it, but when a person's faith stops growing it dies, as I found out the hard way. I might have had faith once, but I let it die, and when it died, my life sucked. I cried several times a night over seemingly nothing or petty reasons, I felt empty and alone and I blamed it on being a teenager, when it wasn't that, it was a loss of faith. I wouldn't let anyone see my brokenness, I let everyone think I was okay, and frankly I was great at hiding it. I can probably count all the people who know that I ever lost my faith at all on one hand.

I've never done drugs, never did any of that, I just let my faith die, and the best thing I ever did was say yes to going to a Tuesday night Bible study, that Bible study changed my life. Chris, if you ever read this, I owe you my spiritual life, God used you in great and marvelous ways that Sunday when you told me you were starting up a Bible study.

So you see, this story of Telk is a story of renewing faith, and the story of what he did with that faith after he finished it is still being written, and frankly, neither he nor I will probably ever know the full result of that mission, which will only be completed when we die, and even then, the people we've touched keep on touching others, so in this way, we never really complete the mission, the mission simply goes on for us.

I hope this helps, and I hope this has clarified a few things for you.