I just finished listening to Turtles All the Way Down by John Green. It was one of a few audiobooks I borrowed from the library to keep in my car and listen to in increments to try to boost my number of books read this year. I’d been wanting to read it for awhile, but since it was new and popular, it was always checked out at the library. But I finally got my hands on it and spent the last couple of weeks listening through.

I don’t really know what to say about it. I was blown away–but in a way that defies clear explanation. For me, it didn’t have the magic of The Fault in Our Stars but it had perhaps an even more visceral effect on me, both personally and professionally. As I finished the last few words and broke down crying, I think I said aloud, “Why is John Green such a genius?”

I’ve rarely encountered an author, especially of young adult fiction, whose works feel so real. And as a writer, I aspire to that. To take reality and package it with that kind of beauty and depth. And yet–despite all the emotion and everything that rings true in this book and his others, there’s always a glaring hollowness. They fall just short of what they could be.

The main character of this book, Aza, impacted me in a way that I’m not sure any fictional character ever has. And it wasn’t that she was any more likable or interesting than any other character–it was because she was a version of me. In her struggles, I saw my own thought processes and my past reflected from an angle that I haven’t seen before. Other characters I may want to emulate or feel sorry for or love to hate–but Aza–

I wanted to reach into the book and rip her out of it, tell her how well I understood, and tell her about the real hope that exists that is so sadly lacking in her insightful story.

Her particular flaws and issues may not be precisely the same as my own, but they are echoes. I know the feeling of being hopelessly trapped in your own mind. I know what it’s like to be an island, trying and failing to build a bridge to the rest of the world. I’ve been through depression, addiction, severe OCD, anxiety, and more. I know what it’s like to try to talk to someone about it and see their face go blank. To feel unhelped and unhelpable.

I also know that there isn’t one answer. I know that the answer is many different pieces. I know that it’s physical, mental, emotional. I saw all these pieces beautifully explored in this slice of fictional life.

But I also know that one particular piece was missing. That the first and the last piece, when it comes to recovery, melds with the physical, mental, emotional–but it is something separate. I know that it’s spiritual, but not a vague, undefined spirituality.

I know that that piece is the hope of Christ. The beauty of learning to see yourself through the eyes of Someone who has created and saved and stands ready to help you. Of coming to find your identity not in either your problems or your accomplishments, but to be free to stand apart from any of that and still be yourself. To surrender everything you can’t control, no matter how much you feel you should be able to. And to just be. To be His. To be loved. To be set apart in the truest sense from everything else.

It comes before and after all the other complex, important parts of the solution. Freedom from our thoughts and inclinations. Freedom to cross over a bridge built for us and join the mass of broken, struggling humanity because in the end it’s not about us–and that’s what gives us power.

But none of this can be found anywhere in the pages of Turtles All the Way Down other than one almost throwaway line at the end of the book–“You serve what you worship. So be careful what you worship.”

I want to tell that truth to Aza. I want to tell it to the millions of hurting young men and women everywhere, lost and floundering and trying to just live their best lives. The way I wish someone would have told it to younger me.

I appreciate John Green’s talent and the insight and thought-provokingness of his writing. But I aspire to something better.

I have empathy to give the world–but I also have truth. My desire is to weave both together into something more valuable than anything else in this world.

The gift of hope.