I feel that I should first explain why this book? why now?
2 weeks ago I spent a date evening with my husband at Barnes and Noble and happened to pick this book up. I read the first 3 chapters in the corner with my Starbucks Salted Carmel Mocha and tears down my face. My husband looked over at me and knew that we were buying the book.
Its funny how things seem to come from no where, but hit you right in the face.
Because I've been hurting. Since that tragic day in April that took my step-dad's life, I have struggled with anger, confusion, fear, anxiety, and plain hurt. Nothing seemed to make anything better and I honestly felt that nothing would be better unless he could just come back. The day prior to the accident, April 2nd, my mom and I chatted about how it was the anniversary of my dad's death many years ago. I told her I loved her, that I was proud of her, and that I was praying for her. Just that next morning, my other dad passed away in a split second.
Life is so fragile. It didn't make sense that my mom would be widowed twice. That the absence of my own father hurt enough, but that the only man that I knew as a father figure would be ripped away. And that my three step sisters would lose their dad in the same tragic way that they had lost their mom 8 years earlier. It didn't make sense....it still doesn't make sense. It didn't feel fair. It didn't feel possible.
And yet here we were 6 months later and I felt just as angry and confused as ever. I felt so far from my mom and the hurt of losing Brian was still present everyday. Honestly...I felt far from God.
I hadn't really read much to help me get through the grieving process. It was hard for me to feel all of the things I was feeling because I felt like I should "know better". You know, the things that everyone says to you to try and comfort you. Yes, those should be comforting, but they weren't. At first I thought my faith was failing, or that I was doing something wrong. I was mad that I was mad at God...does that make sense? Now I understand that I was just healing. I know that God is big enough and good enough to handle my anger and my emotions.
I'm still healing. I decided to review this book as a way to let it settle deep in my soul and reflect on the truths to living in thankfulness and joy. Today I'm just going to include some of my highlighted quotes from the first chapter.
Pg. 12
Where hides this joy of the Lord, this God who fills the earth with good things, and how do I fully live when life is full of hurt? How do I wake up to joy and grace and beauty and all that is the fullest life when I must stay numb to losses and crushed dreams and all that empties me out?
Pg. 15
Satan's sin becomes the first sin of all humanity: the sin of ingratitude. Adam and Eve are, simple, painfully, ungrateful for what God gave. Isn't that the catalyst of all my sins? Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren't satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other.
Pg. 16
And still, we look at the fruit and see only the material means to fill our emptiness. We don't see the material world for what it is meant to be: as the means to communion with God.
Pg. 16
Losses do that. One life-loss can infect the whole of a life. Like a rash that wears through our days, our sight becomes peppered with black voids. Now everywhere we look, we only see all that isn't: holes, lack, deficiency.
Pg. 17
"His secret purpose framed from the very beginning [is] to bring us to our full glory" (1 Corinthians 2:7 NEB). He means to rename us- to return us to our true names, our truest selves. He means to heal out soul holes.
Pg. 21
There's a reason I am not writing the story and God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means. I don't.
Pg. 22
For forty long years, God's people daily eat manna- a substance whose name literally means "What is it?"...they eat the mystery...and the mystery, that which made no sense, is "like wafers of honey" on the lips....I think of ...a world pocketed with pain, and all the mysteries I have refused, refused to let nourish me.
Pg. 22
That that which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond. To Him. To the God whom we endlessly crave.
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