Micha Boyett - Found: A Story of Questions, Grace & Everyday Prayer

I read Micha Boyetts journey into prayer as any blackbelt sinner will, by which I mean anybody willwith sheer delight at her graceful language and riveting struggle for a hard-won faith. In a sense Found is a deep, sweet invitation into Gods loving presence. A must read for nonbelievers and believers alike.

Mary Karr, poet and best-selling author of The Liar's Club and Lit

I devoured this kind and generous book: Micha is singing the longings of all the tired mother pilgrims. Our stories are finally being told, and no one tells about our prayers like Micha Boyett. Every word is like motherhood: elegant, earthy, loving, and present.

Sarah Bessey, author of Jesus Feminist

With this beautiful book, Micha Boyett opens a door to Benedictine spirituality through which regular, busy people can enter and taste, see, smell, hear, and feel what it means to live life as a prayer. Its funny, encouraging, challenging, and relatable, the kind of book that stays with you long after the final pages have been read. This debut sets Boyett apart as one of the most promising new writers of a generation, and I am so grateful she used her considerable talents to reintroduce us to that long-lost friendprayer.

Rachel Held Evans, author of A Year of Biblical Womanhood

With grit and honesty, Micha pulls back the curtain on the beauty and liturgy of everyday life as a mother, a wife, and a follower of Jesus. Her memoir is a welcoming, inspiring read.

Sandra McCracken, recording artist, producer, and hymn writer

Confession: I cried as I read the last page, sad that my journey with Micha and her prayers and her babies was over. A lovely, honest book.

Shauna Niequist, author of Bread & Wine

Micha Boyett has crafted a memoir that will resonate deeply with every mother who has experienced the tension of loving ones children but also struggling with how this new identity as a parent changes every other aspect of ones life. Boyett does not hold back her fears, doubts, and struggles in her quest for a deeper connection to God, and her honesty gives readers permission to consider their own areas of spiritual pain and brokenness. Boyetts words, so beautifully wrought, offer hope, comfort, and healing to those who are not content to remain lost in the fog of the early years of motherhood. In Found, Boyett gives us a fresh depiction of the truth that if we seek God, we surely will findor be foundby him.

Helen Lee, author of The Missional Mom

For years, Micha Boyett tried to win Gods approval through her works: first as a would-be missionary, then as a poet, then as youth group leader, and finally, as a mother. For years, she worked at prayer, too, played at it and performed it. But only after forgetting how to pray did she find its true nature. Boyett's lovely book is itself a prayer.

Karen Swallow Prior, author of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me

Micha Boyett has written a stunningly beautiful spiritual memoir. Found will resonate with anyone who has lost sight of who she is after taking on new roles or beginning a new season of adulthoodand anyone who longs for signs of Gods grace and presence. Youll lose yourself in the story and perhaps, like Boyett, also come to find a new way to approach the divine.

Jennifer Grant, author of Love You More, MOMumental,
Disquiet Time, and 12: A Daybook

Tender and intimate, searching and true, Micha Boyetts journey is extraordinary because it is ordinary. She struggles with jealousy and doubt, ministry and motherhoodand her candor about her hopes and her fears is an enormous gift. She asks questions that many of us would never dare say aloud. And in her quest for answers, she helps us rediscover the power of prayer and marvel again at the mystery of faith.

Jeff Chu, author of Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christians
Pilgrimage in Search of God in America

The birth of a child often changes everything in a mothers life. In Michas case, it left her fumbling for sanity and longing for a deeper connection to God. Michas quest for a meaningful relationship with God inspires and convicts. Its rare to find someone with such keen determination to search for an authentic expression of faith. As a Catholic mom of five, I found much to emulate in Michas delight with the Benedictine practice of faithespecially ordering our days around prayer. Found is a poignant, beautiful treasure.

Elizabeth Esther, author of Girl at the End of the World: My Escape from
Fundamentalism in Search of Faith with a Future

If a good memoir requires a relationship of trust between author and reader, then Micha Boyett has earned my full trust and attention. She writes with elegance and honesty about the search for sacred space in the midst of lifeon the playground, in the kitchen, on the street. Her book speaks powerfully to one of the most perennial questions of allhow do we find God in the day-to-day mess?

Andrea Palpant Dilley, author of Faith and Other Flat Tires: Searching
for God on the Rough Road of Doubt

This book is stunning. Beautifully written, Micha Boyetts Found is a penetrating story, rich in humanity and faith, the kind of book that stays with you long after youve read its last page. Like Henri Nouwen and Madeline LEngle, Boyetts spiritual journey is divinely practical, a relatable and potentially anointed narrative that renews, inspires, and reminds us that we are not lost.

Matthew Paul Turner, author of Churched and
Our Great Big American God

I defy any parent not to be moved by, and relate to, the raw struggle behind Micha Boyetts diamond-cut prose. We all wrestle with the loss of self after parenthood, the questioning of purpose and identity. Rarely do we get to connect with those inner conflicts through poetry such as this. When I finished Found I was compelled to write a gushing, personal confession to Boyett about how she tapped into my own atheist heart. No matter what you believe, youll want to do the same.

Lauren Sandler, author of Righteous and One and Only

Reading Found is like taking a deep breath of grace. Youll hear the echo of your own questions and doubts in the gentle ways Micha Boyett addresses her own, and by the end, youll feel the quiet goodness of enough. For anyone whos ever gotten prayer all tangled up in performancethis ones for you.

Addie Zierman, author of When We Were on Fire: A Memoir of
Consuming Faith, Tangled Love and Starting Over

If youre like me, youve grown weary of a culture that demands the sensationalistic, the glamorous, the extraordinary. Micha Boyett is in search for the beauty in the everyday, the prayer that hides itself in dinners and diapers and naps. She is as skilled of a tour guide for Benedictine spirituality as she is for her own story, and in these pages you will find that the sacred has been there all along.

Adam S. McHugh, author of Introverts in the Church

In Found, Micha Boyett tells the story of her own redemptions, inviting readers into a life of earnest spiritual seeking. Written in reflective bursts of prose mirroring monastic hours and the holy calendar, Boyett has created an account of spiritual resolve, believing that the most important journeys of the heart are the modest ones. And, in doing so, she has drawn a budding generation of contemplatives and prayerful practitioners a fine sketch of how to live a deep, prayerful existence in the world without a cloister or formal religious order.