"So, Jesse continued watching and for the first time" (S9)

So, Jesse continued watching and for the first time in a while, felt like she could pay attention to a face for longer than a few seconds. She didn’t feel the urge to continue scrolling on the app. She just wanted to take a moment, stand still, and simply listen. It had been a few years since she had distanced herself from anything religious. Growing up as a missionary kid and Christian boarding school student, she had developed strong resistance to anything church-related. She and her friends had discussed their religious trauma too often and probably used it as an excuse for too many of their teenage feelings and actions. On this day, however, watching this 40-something-year-old simple yet calm woman explain why faith is important to her as an economist and why people of faith need economists and vice versa, she did not feel the need to criticize what the woman was saying or write an angry comment about it. She was too tired of all of that. She just wanted to listen and accept that others had opinions different from hers, but that they were still smart and respected. Life was too short and stressful to have to oppose something all the time.