Ever - Present
“That bench quickly became sacred to me. It was where I came to cry, to breathe, to pray. Where I let the hard things rise to the surface and didn’t feel the need to fix them right away,” she writes in her collection of honest, humorous, joy-filled and relatable essays about strengthening her relationship with God during college.
While on this journey, she started writing about the moments —both impactful and imperfect ones— when she stumbled upon or sought God’s connection and counsel through those coming-of-age years. The scribblings in a notebook when she should have been studying and voice memos dictated driving home to Charlotte or pausing on a run, come together in 26 essays to make up this beautiful book.
Amelia’s powerful and accessible perspective will be meaningful to anyone who seeks more of a relationship with God and those who feel cemented in their faith. Ever-Present speaks in scripture as well as phrases more likely found in the Urban Dictionary or remarks shared over a cup of coffee.
Amelia Fisher spied the weatherworn wooden bench beyond the stone archway in a little courtyard at the church she visited early in her sophomore year of college.
I should come back here sometime, she thought. But, “sometime” was delayed by academics, club meetings, and the endless whirl of campus life, as she tells readers of Ever-Present: A Testament to the Everyday Gospel Gifted To Each and Every One of Us.
Five months later, navigating college life got harder, anxiety creeped in and her faith felt distant. On a sunny, chilly January afternoon Amelia returned to the courtyard tucked just off the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus. For the first time in a while, she soaked in the quiet and shared everything she was feeling with God.
Amelia is a middle child, avid sailor, devoted daughter and granddaughter, leadfoot driver, frequent bench warmer, heart-on-her-sleeve friend and dyed-in-the-Carolina-blue Tar Heel fan. Her stories of uncertainty and successes take place across North Carolina as well as in a little village in Spain and the wide open Caribbean Sea.
Ever-Present readers will feel they are talking to a longtime friend on a morning walk about what’s happening in their life: good, bad, ugly and beautiful. That friend, Amelia, helps them understand God’s lessons and love, patience and reassurance for navigating any day and any phase of life.