BOOKS BY IVY HUGHES
Other Plans
In the summer of 2010 I, a non-believer and self-proclaimed heretic, read the Bible—Old Testament to new—with a goal to finish Revelations by Christmas Day.
Bored with Michigan and the Midwest, uncomfortable with a stable marriage, I launched the resulting blog, ThumpMe, which challenged believers to make one out of me. At its essence, ThumpMe was a compromise with a straight-laced husband who had vetoed a heroin addiction or driving cross-country with truckers as viable projects.
Instead of bestowing the Holy Spirit, the Bible triggered absolute chaos culling a long lost sense of self. By Ezekiel, I was Army crawling through my Lansing backyard with a BB gun strapped to my back on a mission to quiet a neighbor. By Jeremiah, I was in the Rhine Valley embarking on an affair with a German journalist. By Corinthians, I was back in Colorado with my mom and dad fighting depression and accidental anorexia.
I finished everything but Revelations by Christmas Day. It took four years, a tour around the world and another failed marriage to grasp the end of the world and the reality that this generation’s version of the Stepford Wives is not for everyone.