I warned you it was coming, and it's finally here!
I have been fortunate enough to be able to review Shauna Niequist's new book, Bittersweet, and share it with all you lovely readers.
This collection is an ode to all things bittersweet, to life at the edges, a love letter to what change can do in us. This is what I've come to believe about change: it's good, in the way that childbirth is good, and heartbreak is good, and failure is good. By that I mean that it's incredibly painful, exponentially more so if you fight it, and also that it has the potential to open you up, to open life up, to deliver you right into the palm of God's hand, which is where you wanted to be all along, except that you were too busy pushing and pulling your life into exactly what you thought it should be.
[prologue: bittersweet]
I have been pondering what to write for my review for quite some time, and I haven't really known where to start. This is mostly because with each chapter I read, I feel like getting up out of my chair and saying, "AMEN!", and then frantically sitting back down to type out an excerpt to email a friend. ...which I have actually done already on a few occasions.
This book is one of the most honest things I've ever read - things I've always wanted to say but never known how to. And not about life's major headlining issues, but the underlying currents that drive us along. Each chapter is just a few pages long, but each one has a pretty powerful punch to it.
Maybe it's because I feel as though I'm in the same life stage as Shauna, with both my physical and emotional world swirling with change and unsteadiness, but I find myself wanting to re-read certain chapters to soak them in better, studying them like I would a piece of art. Shauna's writing reminds me of why I love modern art - she uses basic words or movements that everyone can understand to create something something beautiful that reaches down and touches your very soul. Certain chapters don't necessarily apply to my life right now, but others have touched me in a significant way.
For a while in my early twenties I felt like I woke up a different person every day, and was constantly confused about which one, if any, was the real me. I feel more and more like myself with each passing year, for better and for worse, and you'll find that, too.
[twenty-five]
And this is what Denise told me: she said it's not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What's hard, she said, is figuring out what you're willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.
[things I don't do]
After reading the chapter titled Love Song for Fall, I actually sent an email to my best friend saying that I wish I could somehow print out that entire chapter and frame it on my wall.
We create because we were made to create, having been made in the image of God, whose first role was Creator. He was and is a million different things, but in the beginning, He was a creator. That means something for us, I think. We were made to be the things that He is: forgivers, redeemers, second chance-givers, truth-tellers, hope-bringers. And we were certainly, absolutely, made to be creators.
[love song for fall]
I could gush for a while about this book, but let me sum it up with this:
This book is designed for busy women. It has short chapters, each of which are thought-provoking and brutally honest and incredibly applicable to life. And yet, this book somehow manages not to be a devotional, or a self-help book. It's like opening the window into Shauna's mind and just listening to it work its way through the day.
...me being in December is like an alcoholic being in a bar: temptations abound.
[ravenous]
Oh...and if you love food as much as I do, you're going to definitely love all the descriptions she uses in this book, not to mention the chapter titled, What We Ate, and Why It Matters.
I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility.
[what we ate & why it matters]
Add this to all your Christmas lists my sweet friends...it's an excellent book. (or buy it, right now, right here!)
You can also check out more of Shauna's awesomeness at her website:
www.shaunaniequist.com
Shauna Niequist is the author of Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life. Her second book, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way, will release this summer. She lives outside Chicago with her husband Aaron and their son Henry. She studied English and French literature at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, and worked at Willow Creek for five years and at Mars Hill in Grand Rapids for three years. Shauna loves to travel, eat, read and host dinner parties.
Now for those of you who made it all the way through, there's more! Because Shauna is incredible, she is allowing me to give one of YOU a free, signed copy of this wonderful book!
All you need to do is leave a comment after this post. I'm going to leave the window of opportunity open till Saturday at midnight, and then after that point, I'll use random.org to choose which winner, who I'll announce on Sunday.
Because I'm a mean, snarky woman, I'm not going to let you just say, "pick me!" in order to be eligible. No, my friends, you have to do a little work. All I want is to hear a short little description of your favorite Christmas memory. It can be about an event, a tradition, a food, or even a decoration. That's all, I promise!
Now go comment, and make sure you share this opportunity to score Shauna's new book with all your friends!
