Bittersweet

With my hands full of garbage can lids, I met one of my new neighbors. She said she heard a Christian writer had moved onto the street and she wondered if I was the next Shauna Niequist. Immediately I wanted to hug her and claim her as my new best friend because I couldn't think of another writer I would want to be compared to.

Almost three years ago, I heard Shauna Niequist on the radio promoting her first book, Cold Tangerines. She described that book as one of celebration and claimed she wanted to be known as someone who celebrated and lived every moment of life. My heart, at the time completely broken from recurring losses, wanted to be her - that woman who celebrates even when life is hard. So I bought that book. And read it on a Florida beach while soaking in as much sun as my skin could possibly hold. I underlined, read out loud, and found myself believing Shauna and I were in fact the same person because so many of our life experiences were the same. That book was my inspiration to consciously choose to turn my back on letting recent hard knocks define the rest of my life but instead choose to celebrate because life is in fact good and God hasn't disappeared.

Since finishing that final page of Cold Tangerines, I could hardly wait until Shauna released her next book. When I received a copy of Bittersweet, I thought about saving it until I could fully enjoy it on another beach, but desire for more inspiration compelled me to get started right away, and I wasn't sorry.

Even though I loved Shauna's thoughts on celebration and the way she approached it from a real way of acknowledging hurt even in the middle of celebration, something about it made me question what her essays would be like if she had experienced deep loss. The kind of loss that makes you want to sit and stare and wonder if the pain would ever go away. Bittersweet is the answer and I am not disappointed with her honesty and complete openness even in the middle of a broken spirit.

As expected, my copy of Bittersweet is underlined and dogeared and even now I struggle with what thought I want to share the most. I'm bouncing between thoughts of change, joy in finding theological doctrines to be absolutely true when put into practice, and the importance of telling our own stories. In the middle of her hard season which Shauna writes from come encouragements down the road of faith. But she doesn't stop with her story and this I love.

Her final essay is a call to all people of faith. "If you are a person of faith, it is your responsibility to tell God's story in every way you can, every form, every medium, every moment. ... Don't allow the story of God, the sacred, transforming story of what God does in a human heart to become flat and lifeless. ... If you have been transformed by the grace of God, then you have within you all you need to write your manifesto, your poem, your song, your battle cry, your love letter to a beautiful and broken world. Your story must be told."

That means your story. Not just mine because I have a blog, or Shauna's because she wrote a book, or your pastor's because he stands in front of the crowd every Sunday. Your own story. Your story of loss, of change, of grace, of hope, of love. It's your unique story meant to be shared. Meant to challenge, motivate, and reveal more of God's heart to whoever you choose to share it with.

Perhaps because our losses have been the same, or because I too recently moved, or because I too long to see God's grace in the middle of it all, or maybe because I love her quick chapters that have left me with plenty to ponder when I have to put the book down and get back to my harried life. Perhaps because I have seen the bittersweetness in life and am reminded of it every time I write Amelie Hope's middle name. For all these things, I am thankful that even though she risked much by opening herself up bare to the world, Shauna dared to share her stories and her discoveries of God's grace.

The bittersweetness of my day today is that I have finished reading this book.

But, I am so pleased to get to offer one of my readers a signed copy of the book! Yes this is it, my very first giveaway and what an honor it is to be able to share it with one of you. Please leave a comment on my blog before the end of the day on Friday, October 22nd and I will randomly choose a winner. I know many of you read and comment on these notes in Facebook, but for this giveaway, I will just look at comments on the blog itself.

I can only have one winner but I encourage everyone else to check out the book for yourself.