of Love and Long Distance and Writing

I'm not sure how I found this book, but it was a good read, the tale of humanitarian/missionary 30-somethings who find each other by blogs and emails and fall in love.  One of my favorite real-life stories, which has been repeated a handful of times even in Bundibugyo.  Here is the author's site.    Enjoy.

And here is my favorite quote:
". . That I started writing the essays largely because it was fun, but I kept writing them even when it wasn't nearly as much fun because I sensed that it was an important discipline for me to cultivate-that in the face of a constant kaleidoscope of airports and faces it would serve me well to learn to narrow my focus to a moment.  To take that moment for what it was and to think carefully about what else it could be.
  That over time, without my even really noticing, writing had become a spiritual discipline -one way for me to snatch breaths from beneath the waterfall of life.
  That now, like the chemicals on a photographic negative, it is the keyboard that helps me define my experiences.  On my best days, a jumble of moments, like so many bright pixels, coalesce into something vibrant and evocative as I type.   Often I feel as if I have not understood anything of waht an experience has really meant to me until I have anchored it in text.  "

Yes.  That's writing.

And as a person who anchors in text, and who spent four years in a long-distance writing relationship with the love of my life before we got married, I resonated with this book.