“Happiness is so hard to come by. I don’t understand why anyone would begrudge anyone else for managing to find some of it.”

She was no longer Joan, or no longer only Joan. She was also part of this larger body, this larger self. That could only exist when they were together.

“Your commitment to the world around you. How much you care. You are so thoughtful. About everything.”

“Great: for fourteen minutes, try to calm down, and then you can go right back to shoving coal up your butt and pulling out diamonds.”

“What an awful thing to do to a person! To make them believe they can have the things they never believed they deserved. And then take it away. What an awful thing.”

How can her heart sink in microgravity? But it does.

“I don’t know but I…I want to show you every good thing I’ve ever found,” Joan said.

Small, slight, unimportant Joan. Just one person of five billion, on a small planet orbiting a small star, in a humble galaxy, one of billions of galaxies. Joan is so insignificant and yet, look what God had given her. Look at all that God had given her. Look at what no one will ever be able to take away.

“Happiness is so hard to come by. I don’t understand why anyone would begrudge anyone else for managing to find some of it.”