Bittersweet

Within the last 36 hours, I devoured this: Travis bought it for me last week at a conference we attended. The note he wrote in the front was so sweet, I considered not even reading further. June and July are crazy - which make our marriage a little crazy and often result in me yelling things like "HOW COULD YOU FORGET THE DRY CLEANING?!!!!" as if he'd forgotten my birthday - for the last ten years.

We are fortunate to be able to spend a lot of August reconnecting as a family and contemplating
where we are headed and if we can afford the aforementioned dry cleaning to get us there.

But now, this memoir is infusing so many of my thoughts. Shauna Niequist writes in a raw and honest way during a recent season in her life - one with many transitions and lots of questions. She admits to finally learning how to understand the core of the Christian faith: death and rebirth. She confesses to previously fighting the death that precedes life: I'll just have some life, thanks so much.

The book is a collection of vignettes on incredibly ordinary things - meals, weddings, babies, love, loss, disappointment, work, family, and friendships. Yet, Niequist's rich language and ability to be so fully honest somehow weave each story into a beautiful portrait. As I first began reading my reaction was "Wow, she has a really cool life..." but with each chapter it became so clear that she's describing my life - and your life. The relationships and the memories, the food and the yoga pants. And the disappointment and heartbreak and longing.


We have mourned for dear friends this year, hoped and prayed for healing for others, and next week we will no doubt all joyfully dance like fools at Scott and Morgan's wedding. And on and on it goes. Then their are my own struggles with expectations and disappointments, trying to get it right and barely getting it done. I'm still learning that marriages and babies don't come with textbooks or syllabi - and I am not being graded on a curve, or actually being graded at all. I am finally accepting that almost everyone spends some time crying in the shower.

This book honors this life that is so unsure, and so sad in some moments, and breathtaking and joyful in others. But it describes these tensions without downplaying the pain or cheapening the beauty. It does not give a formula to quench the suffering. Suffering is and will be. Joy is and will continue on. There is change and transformation that emerge out of embracing this reality - not fighting it, not hiding from it:

"Bittersweet is the practice of believing that we really do need the bitter and the sweet. Sweet is nice enough, but bittersweet is beautiful, nuanced, full of depth and complexity. It's courageous, gutsy, audacious, earthy." - Shauna Niequist