What went wrong in Austin, or Dead, part 3

 Part 1, Dead, explains how I figured out I was dead. Part 2, Waking up, describes life through death.

When we came to Austin, I was in the thick of my Doo-doo diet.  Jeff and I visited a number of churches around town (ironically we rejected a church based on its promotion of Doo-doo parenting materials). We settled into a church that felt like a comfortable place to live out our Doo-doo life, with protection from the Donot stuff. And there we sat for years. The body of knowledge from the 1000+ hours of doctrinal lectures surely should have at least come with a Bachelor of Arts degree. We had our little city-within-a-city, insulated and warm.  I could go for years without ever talking to "those kind" of people whose Donot lists left them thin and frail.

And that's what I did. Secure in my little world...and miserable. The harder I tried, the more I failed. I had my denim jumper-I didn't tempt men with my made up face and body on display. I had my homeschooled kids (oops, I mean lambs) in matching outfits, one following another every couple of years. We had no Disney movies, we had no wizard books.  No matter how hard I did the things on the right list, I was no happier. There was no formula to turn everything out right.

And then I went all Rip Van Winkle, Sleeping Beauty- I woke up. I had to start cutting away what was blinding me from seeing the world around me. I emerged, and looked back.  It was like Dorothy- Kansas had been so safe and warm, but there was something for her to learn in Oz. I stepped into Technicolor.