This is so unbelievably wordy, Shannon is surprised how much of it she actually feels she understands. It is a part of dad that she had never allowed herself to understand.

    She reads on: "What truly exists is then replaced by what we want to exist in our minds …and often it's common to so many of us, it's equally easy to accept.  The desire to share outgrows itself, so the desire is to share what no one has ever before shared…when instead, the risks and challenge we should take, is in sharing the truth which has always been there and is not new at all.  The challenge then becomes not with understanding that which surrounds us, but admitting to that which is so errantly within us ---replacing our pride with the humility of admitting it, and risking unpopularity as we continue to seek amid scoffers and accusations, others pretending to be offended ---while we merely attempt to defend the truth.  
    
   The struggle has always been through our misunderstood desires. It's like the children's book by Eric Carle, entitled The Mixed-Up Chameleon.   When we are cold and hungry and feeling grey and dull, with not a very exciting life, and we consider ourselves small and weak …we may entertain all sorts of desires.  Yet, if we consider that we are weak, but He is strong …and we are to hunger and thirst after His righteousness, then perhaps soon our desires will be His desires for us.  But if we move our focus off what He wants for us, then in reality, we're changing how we represent Him …which leads us to not really accepting Him, but instead some version of what we have created, and we end up not glorifying Him much, or not at all. Instead we begin practicing protective mimicry …to make ourselves look like that which is around us."   


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