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Sometimes life is hard. Really hard. Mingled amidst moments of joy and thankfulness, life can often be filled with hurt and heartache, too. The unimaginable happens. Disappointments crush our spirits. Life intersects with reality. We find ouselves in the midst of the strangling weeds of imcomprehensible loss or confusion or fear. If you have 'been there', in a struggle with despair/depression, overwhelmed with loss/grief, broken and bruised, I think you might appreciate this poignant read.
A few of my favorite lines/lessons from the book; just bits & pieces.
“God okay if you mad, Miz Mackenzie. Way I figure, he hear evey’thing, so ain’t much we gots to say gon’ shock him. But when you take the heart he gone and placed inside you and shut it all down, well…don’t know if there by anythin’ make him ache more.”
“He wasn’t going to run from his grief any longer. Instead, when the grief showed up, he was going to run into it. He would hold it, feel it, absorb its impact. Then he’d move back into the life that, for whatever reason, he’d been left to live.”
“Father, my baby girl is broken, and I can’t fix her. I see that now. I really do. I’ve done everything I know to do. I’m all out of fixin.”
“But no matter what it pretend to be, pride be such a liar. It make us think we sump’n we ain’t. Make us think we can get by without God.”
“Not around or under. Just through.” This reminds me of Isaiah 43:2 which says, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass throught the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned."
“Forgive me,” she whispered. She spoke it for many reasons. But she spoke it first to herself. She had to in order to live. Finally, she spoke it to heaven. She was coming to realize that heaven had not been holding her prisoner. Yes, God had allowed her to be crushed beneath a weight of grief she didn’t feel anyone should have to carry, but it was she who had imprisoned her own soul. It was self-pity that had held her in a prison of grief. Not that the pain wasn’t real. But somehow it had welded itself to resentment over the fact that real life didn’t match her picture of it. She had assumed she deserved to have the life she wanted, and when that didn’t happen, she had wanted to give up. For that, she told heaven she was sorry.”
“And in that deep place in her soul, where the black pit that had all but swallowed her whole still existed as a reminder of what she could choose, she made a decision.”
