"It wasn't that I changed, I simply recognized the continuity that always existed," said Jaroslav Pelikan, Biblical historian, talking about how his "conversion" to Orthodox Christianity was not so much a conversion, but a process of becoming aware that he had always "spoken" Orthodox Christianity in his day-to-day life, but had never named it that.

Krista Tippet, his interviewer, and host of Speaking on Faith, a radio show I listen to, laughed with him and said, "Well, isn't all change like that?"

I repeated what Pelikan had said to myself: Change is recognizing the continuity that has always existed. I like the sound of it, it's linguistic simplicity, though I'm not sure I believe it. Certainly, my own spirituality has been just this, just seeing, bit by bit that I've always gotten what I needed, that I've never felt alone, that despite feeling like I'd inevitably get hurt or disappointed, I always wanted to believe; so that one day, while listening to a woman sing, I recognized the continuity of connectedness I'd always felt and finally felt ok calling it God.

But the events that have changed my life completely, I'm not so sure. Consider my mom's stroke when I was 15 years old, and all the change that it precipitated. Was there a continuity revealed there? Our family's response wasn't so much a pulling together, a rallying of love and revelations of support for one another. Matt, at 20, quit school and began working overtime to help pay the house payment and put food on the table. I quit babysitting and got a real job and worked as much as I could legally. Mark, so ill-equipped to deal with upsets held rigidly to his routines. With Mom in the hospital for weeks and all of us "doing our own thing" to get through, it was only our daily visits to Mom that brought us together and her urgings to pull together and show one another care and concern didn't really reach our freaked out and bereft hearts.

We never sat down and talked about what it felt like to have had our mother nearly die, for me to be the first person to hear her having the stroke, for Mark to be woken in the middle of the night and help me drag her out to the car to go the emergency room, for Matt, who had drank too much and slept too soundly to be roused by my screams for help. Two teenagers and one barely adult, we didn't know how to rally, to bond and become stronger, and left to our own devices outside of the hour or so with my Mom each day, my brothers and I became estranged from one another, fought endlessly when we were all together, so that I began spending less and less time at home, more time with extra-curricular activities, friends, and, even, dating.

By the time Mom returned to the house, the changes that had passed between my bothers and I were buried, we put on a front, without even talking about it, we tried to be more civil, more united, more of what my Mom needed. She recovered, more or less, completely over the next year or so, but I wonder about how well we recovered as a family sometimes. Now, today, with Pelikan's words echoing in my mind, I wonder what continuity was revealed by this massive assault on our lives.

I have a photo of us in front of the Christmas tree the December after Mom's stroke. She was still not very mobile and had asked me to buy sweatpants and sweatshirts for all of us for Christmas. She didn't have money for anything else. In the picture, we're sporting our colorful, warm fleece and smiling. Looking at the photo now, we all look tired and the smiles don't seem to come from deep down. It's my Mom's eyes, though, that give away how I think we all felt: they're teary, and though I don't know what she was feeling at that moment, I imagine that Christmas she felt overwhelmed with relief that her babies were all around her and imagine she was overcome with gratitude for another shot at being alive. How tired we all were with working or running away or trying to keep us together and bonded, didn't really matter, because we were still a family, and would go on being this imperfect, unprocessed, forever healing family. One that laughs easily, feels strongly, argues from time to time, but is also bound together by a significant trauma, by the obligation of blood, and most of all, by the power of love to transform it all into our individual and collective experiences of growth and humanity.

Ah, so this? This is the power of writing. I wasn't so sure there was continuity in this changing event in my life when I started writing, but here it is, revealed word by stealthy word, without my knowing it would get there. And so it seems that yes, I do believe that change is simply recognizing the continuity that has always existed.