Bittersweet: Review and Giveaway

I have never read a book this honest.  This raw.  

Often, we try to sugar coat our lives, and only reveal the best in ourselves, even to those we love.  But in Shauna's second book, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way, she pours a bittersweet season of her life onto the pages. Bittersweet is a compilation of beautiful essays, that draw you in like an intimate friendship. Shauna focuses on such topics as infertility, moving, friendship, community, loss, faith, and the reality of marriage.  But here's the thing: She somehow manages to pull you through the pages with tears and laughter.  You want to keep reading, and are urgent for more.  

This is the book you will read again and again and quote to your love, because they will wonder why you are laughing and crying.  Then, you will email your friend with a quote, because it's too late to call and they don't have the book yet!

Bittersweet is a book for everyone, at every stage. It's a conversation with a friend that doesn't need to end.  This quote was taken from the chapter titled, "Eight for Eight", discussing her group of girlfriends from high school.  They each have very different lives and experiences: both bitter and sweet.  

When I told Jenny I was pregnant this time, she texted back immediately that she was so happy for me, and that she wished she were pregnant, too. The honesty of that moment sliced me. I know she does, and I don't know why she hasn't yet found a person that's right for her to make a family with. Any man would be beyond lucky to make a family with her. When I talk with Jenny about it, I hear the deep yearning for something that hasn't yet come to be. We've all felt it, as different as our stories are.

In my most blind moments, I think that women without children live luxurious, carefree lives, filled with nothing but cosmopolitans, bikinis, and well-maintained highlights. I find that the phrase "She's let herself go" fills me with terror and guilt and panic as I look down at my jagged dirty fingernails and overly soft tummy. I am she, certainly. And then I realize that as much as I want my friend Jenny's abs, she wants a baby, and we're all yearning for something.

Everyone is yearning for something: the proposal, the dream job, the next step, or the body that does what is expected.  As Jack starts school, and my pending birthday quickly approaches, I am thinking through whether my life has turned out as I expected.  Yes, and no.  It depends on when I was doing the "expecting."  The first few years of our marriage had plenty of bitter, but now there is so much sweet, and I would not be able to appreciate all of the sweetness without those difficult seasons.  In the same way, I have a whole new gratefulness for Holden after my miscarriage.  As Shauna writes, "a life of nothing but sweetness rots both your teeth and your soul."

**Now the fun part!  Zondervan Publishing Co. has offered to send one of my readers a signed copy of Bittersweet!** 

Here is what you need to do to enter, and you can do that up to three times:

1) Leave a comment with the word BITTERSWEET.

2) Answer this question: Have the bittersweet experiences in your life made you the person you imagined or thought you would be? 

3) Subscribe to my blog here, or share this giveaway on Facebook or Twitter, and let me know in your link.

A winner will be chosen at random, thanks to the joys of computer software.

Giveaway ends September 23, 2010.

To read more about Shauna, or check when she will be in your area for an event, click HERE.  If you would like to buy yourself and all of your friends a copy of Bittersweet, click HERE.