This is the Highest Ambition of Christian Vocation

Anne Porter was a wife and mother of five, and her family’s busy South Hampton home became a respite for friends suffering breakups and mental health crises. One particularly busy summer, Anne wrote to her mother that they seemed to have gained the reputation as “rest home for broken-down New Yorkers.” Those childrearing years — and those numerous house guests — left Anne, a poet, with little quiet space for writing. Her first poetry collection (a finalist for the National Book Award) wasn’t published until she was 83. I stumbled across Anne’s story — and a video interview of her, confined to a wheelchair just months before her death — and inhaled relief. There might be time. I, too, am a wife and mother of five, and at various seasons, my house has whirred. To support my husband’s career aspirations and to raise our children, I left my full-time teaching…