It’s kind of like a Bucket List. A list of thirty people who have influenced you and whom you would like to meet.

Debbie Macomber, in her non-fiction books Knit Together and God’s Guest List, writes about her List of Thirty, a list of thirty people she would like to meet.  She includes anecdotes about how God brought those people (most of them famous, some of them extremely famous) across her path.

I’ve had my own list for several years now.

And I get to check off two of them within a month of each other.

In November, I went to a writer’s conference and was privileged to learn from Donald Maass, of the Maass Literary Agency and author of Writing the Breakout Novel. I only spoke to him for a minute, but it was enough to earn him a check mark on my list.

Tonight, I’ll be at a reading by Anne Lamott and will hopefully add another check to that list. I’ve said before that Anne taught me two things:

• Everything I know about being transparent and honest I learned from Anne,

and

• Not all Christians think like me or are conservative like me but that doesn’t mean they love God and Jesus less or that God and Jesus love them less.

I’ll probably be a basket case if I get to speak to her and won’t be able to articulate what her writing has meant to me and my journey of faith.

But I also know:

• It won’t be the first time she’s been confronted with a weeping fan

and

• I’ll be okay and Jesus will still love me and Annie both.

Check back next week and I’ll let you know how it went!