Savvy’s parents pray for her and her sister’s adjustments to their new home. The family prays individually and together. They also call relatives to ask for prayer when something big happens. Savvy tries to reason with God in one of her prayers, suggesting that He should understand and accept her reasons for lying. Her unsettled feeling indicates that God is not OK with her lie. Savvy’s prayers are informal, more like a conversation with God, and she equates the warm feeling she receives after most of them as a sign of God’s presence.
Savvy is tempted to tell a second lie to make a friend, but because she feels guilty about her first lie, she doesn’t. The Holy Spirit uses her conscience to encourage Savvy to do the right thing and admit her lie. At a crucial moment, when she has a lot to lose, Savvy does admit her inexperience as a school newspaper reporter and makes things right. She realizes that telling the truth did not pay off for her in a material way because she doesn’t get to be a writer on the paper. Later, when she doesn’t want to disappoint her parents, she mentions that she’s on the newspaper staff, but she doesn’t tell them that she’s the one who delivers the papers. She also keeps the fact that she ruined her mother’s silk shirt a secret.
Eventually, she tells them the whole truth about each incident because she doesn’t like keeping her life a secret from her parents, and it’s the right thing to do before God. The bookmark in her mother’s Bible keeps moving, which implies that she’s been reading the Bible. Savvy has stuffed her Bible under her bed. Soon she is convicted about not reading it. She finds that God gives her His peace and prepares her for the day when she reads His Word. The family visits different churches in their quest to find a church home. Some Sundays they do not go to church but have a family devotion.
They do not want a church that only has old people, and Savvy’s father does not want to attend a church that is too charismatic. He is a quieter personality. Savvy bases her column responses to reader questions on James 5 (wisdom), Psalm 139 (identity) and Luke 6:31 (how to treat others).