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Bittersweet: Thoughts On Change, Grace, and Learning The Hard Way by Shauna Niequist
Bittersweet: Thoughts On Change, Grace, and Learning The Hard Way by Shauna Niequist
Bittersweet: Thoughts On Change, Grace, and Learning The Hard Way by Shauna Niequist
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ZONDERVAN
Bittersweet
Copyright 2010 by Shauna Niequist
This title is also available as a Zondervan ebook.
Visit www.zondervan.com/ebooks.
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Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Niequist, Shauna.
Bittersweet : thoughts on change, grace, and learning the hard way / Shauna
Niequist.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-310-32816-2 (hardcover, printed)
1. Niequist, Shauna. 2. Christian biography. I. Title.
BR1725.N525A3 2010
277.3'083092dc22
2010016554
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible,
New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used
by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers printed in this
book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an
endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites
and numbers for the life of this book.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without
the prior permission of the publisher.
Published in association with Yates & Yates, www.yates2.com.
Cover design: Curt Diepenhorst
Cover photography: Big Event Studios / Mark Smith
Interior design: Beth Shagene
Printed in the United States of America
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For Aaron
Most of what Ive learned about love and about art,
Ive learned from you.
Youre the love story of my life.
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contents
prologue: bittersweet | 11
learning to swim | 15
the blue house | 23
the closer you get | 29
what we ate and why it matters | 35
heartbeat | 41
on desperation and cold pizza | 47
things i dont do | 53
alameda | 61
what we left in south bend | 67
feeding and being fed | 71
sea dreaming | 75
grace is new math | 81
twenty-five | 85
thin places | 91
gifts, under the tree and otherwise | 97
coming home | 101
what might have been | 107
happy mothers day | 111
say something | 117
on crying in the bathroom | 123
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prologue
bittersweet
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prologue: bittersweet
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learning to swim
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bittersweet
world in Grand Rapids, and that loss left a hole in our lives
that was as tender and palpable as a bruise.
The day after our son Henrys first birthday, my brother
Todd left on a two-year sailing trip around the world, taking
my husbands best friend Joe with him. My best friend,
Annette, left Grand Rapids and moved back to California. I
got pregnant again, our kitchen and basement flooded, and
on the Fourth of July I lost the baby. My first thought, there in
the doctors office, was, Everything in my life is dying. I cant
keep anything alive.
At some point in all that, we put our house up for sale,
which meant lots and lots of showings but no offers. After
several months, my husband and our son and I left our house
still for sale and moved home to Chicago, to a little house on
the same street I lived on as a child, exhausted and battered,
out of breath and shaken up.
It may appear to an outside observer that these have
been the best years of our lives. We became parents to a
healthy child; we met interesting people and heard their
stories and were welcomed into their homes and churches. I
wrote a book, and Aaron recorded an album, and we got to
be, really and truly, working artists. Every time I read over that
list, I know that it should have been wonderful. But should
have been is worth absolutely nothing. For most of that
season, I was clenching my teeth, waiting for impact, longing
for it to be over.
I know that to another person my difficult season
would have been a walk in the park, and that all over the
world, people suffer in unimaginable ways and manage far
worse than my own little list.
I was miserable because I lost touch with the heart of
the story, the part where life always comes from death. I love
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learning to swim
the life part, and I always try to skip over that pesky death
part. You cant do that, as much as Ive tried.
I believe that God is making all things new. I believe
that Christ overcame death and that pattern is apparent all
through life and history: life from death, water from a stone,
redemption from failure, connection from alienation. I believe
that suffering is part of the narrative, and that nothing really
good gets built when everythings easy. I believe that loss
and emptiness and confusion often give way to new fullness
and wisdom.
But for a long season, I forgot all those things. I didnt
stop believing in God. It wasnt a crisis of faith. I prayed
and served and pursued a life of faith the way I had before
that season and the way I still do now. But I realized all at
once, sitting in church on a cold dark night, that the story
I was telling was the wrong oneor at the very least, an
incomplete one. I had been telling the story about how hard
it was. Thats not the whole story. The rest of the story is that
I failed to live with hope and courage and lived instead a
long season of whining, self-indulgence, and fear. This is my
confession.
Im able to see now that what made that season feel so
terrible to me were not the changes. What made that season
feel so terrible is that I lost track of some of the crucial beliefs
and practices that every Christian must carry with them.
Possibly a greater tragedy is that I didnt even know it until
much later.
Looking back now I can see that it was more than
anything a failure to believe in the story of who God is and
what he is doing in this world. Instead of living that story
one of sacrifice and purpose and characterI began to
live a much smaller story, and that story was only about me.
I wanted an answer, a timeline, and a map. I didnt want to
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bittersweet
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learning to swim
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bittersweet
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to bits. Theyll hold you under, drag you across the rough
sand, scare and confuse you. But if you can find it within
yourself, in the wildest of seasons, just for a moment, to
trust in the goodness of God, who made it all and holds it
all together, youll find yourself drawn along to a whole new
place, and theres truly nothing sweeter. Unclench your fists,
unlock your knees and also the door to your heart, take a
deep breath, and begin to swim. Begin to let the waves do
their work in you.
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before diving into the next thing. Freelancing to him felt safe,
because he couldnt be hurt by a church again if he didnt
commit to a church again.
More than anything, I wanted a plan. I wanted to move,
find a new church, start over as soon as possible. I hated the
loneliness of traveling so much for work and felt unanchored
without a church community. I felt like we were treading
water, stuck in a life that was no longer livable, hanging on to
the past. I was worried about neither of us having a paycheck,
and Aaron was worried about jumping into the next thing
just for a paycheck. The more worried I got, the more remote
he got. We began a terrible dance at that blue house, and
continued dancing it for the better part of a year.
Our inability to hear and understand one another was
the worst part of this dark season, and that first summer was
just the beginning. I regret my unwillingness to hear and
understand my husband, and my rampant, illogical fear about
our future. The two, of course, are related: if I hadnt been
so wound up about a plan, maybe I would have been able to
listen to him tell me that it wasnt flakiness but his own fears
that kept him from moving forward. We found that fear is
like a hand grenade: surprisingly powerful and surprisingly
destructive.
Now a few years later, were packing to go to that same
house even as I write, piles around the house beginning to
take shape: beach towels, books, jars of peanut butter, and
bottles of wine. Our life has changed in a thousand ways
since that summer, and my prayer for this summer is that
Aaron and I will do now what we couldnt do then, that well
face one another with tenderness and patience, that well
let the house sit empty except for us sometimes, and let
ourselves sit on the porch in the fading light hearing nothing
but each others voices.
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