Growing Up Saved: When Loving God Feels Like Losing Yourself

Kristen LaValley grew up a church kid through and through. She said “the sinner’s prayer” before she could write her name—and spent the next few decades trying to prove she meant it; in a body that couldn’t rest, with a mind she didn’t yet understand, under a God she was afraid to disappoint. She learned to perform the kind of faith that got praised: one that hid pain and swallowed questions.

But in the thick...