Bittersweet

I finished reading a book called ‘Bittersweet’ by Shauna Niequist last week while I was waiting during visitation to sit with a friend in jail.  Four months ago another friend, a student here at ETBU, had given me the book in hope to help me walk through our miscarriages with the aim of healing.  I wanted to honor the author and the broader story in all our lives by including some portions of her thoughts which have been good companions to me during these times.

“Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful… a sliver of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich when it contains a splinter of sadness.  Bittersweet is the practice of believing that we really do need both the bitter and the sweet, and that a life of nothing but sweetness rots both your teeth and your soul.  Bitter is what makes us strong, what forces us to push through…. Bittersweet is beautiful, nuanced, full of depth and complexity… [it is] courageous, gutsy, earthy.” (p.11)

“It’s not hard to decide what you want your life to be about.  What’s hard… is figuring out what you’re willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.” (p.54)

“Grace…. it’s forgiveness without forgetting, which is much sweeter than amnesia.” (p.83)

“Sometimes pain makes us selfish, myopic, and utterly unable to understand people whose pain is different than ours.  It shouldn’t be that way.  It should be that all pain softens us to all pain.” (p.123)

“God’s will, should we choose to engage in it, will generally feel like surgery, rooting out all the darkness and fear we’ve come to live with.” (p.231)

“The question is not, will my life be easy or will my heart break?  But rather, when my heart breaks, will I choose to grow?” (p.233)

“If you’ve been sitting quietly, year after year, hoping that someone will finally start speaking a language that makes sense to you, may I suggest that you are that person?  If you’ve been longing to hear a new language for faith, one that rises and falls like a song, may I suggest that you start singing?  If you want your community to be marked by radical honesty, by risky, terrifying, ultimately redemptive truth-telling, you must start telling your truth first.” (p.240)