Past Tense, Present Progressive

I still remember the person I used to be.  Dedicated, sincere, very securely walled-in behind my black and white beliefs: an entanglement of Republicanism and Fundamentalist Christianity that was all I knew. I was that person, listening to the sermon at church, who heard that President Bill Clinton had covertly sold our country to "Red China", and that increased persecution of American Christians was in our future...The threat of this persecution seeming more vivid and horrifying due to publications at my church like Voice of the Martyrs , with its photos of tortured Christians in China. I was that person who prayerfully voted for George W. Bush as a newly-registered voter, affectionately framing a newspaper photo of him so I could remember to pray for him to do God's will as president. I was that person who volunteered her time for pro-family activism, convinced that homosexuality was inherently wrong and destructive to society... lobbying at the State Capitol in Califor...

You know those people who go to college campuses, high schools, and even middle schools to hold enormous pictures of aborted fetuses?  I was one of those people.  For almost two years, starting at age 19, I participated in a local pro-life group made up almost exclusively of fundamentalist homeschooled teens, called "Teens for Life". I had never even been inside a middle school or high school, and was attending a church that actively discouraged women from going to college, yet there I was, holding bloody pictures and trying to pass out literature on the sidewalk in front of them.  I had no social skills , crippling depression , and was unable to carry on a conversation even with other members of my pro-life group, yet there I was, trying to interact with the public in the most aggressive and controversial way possible. It has been ten years since those days, but one thing has not changed: I still consider abortion a tragedy that we as a society should work to pre...