Shauna Niequist is THAT Person

This is officially a reminder that this is your last chance to enter the Bittersweet Giveaway!  Unofficially, this is a post about Shauna Niequist and the special role she played in my life.  The picture below was taken at one of Shauna's many parties: a baby shower for Melissa to celebrate the adoption of Selah.  Hello 2005!  That was back when my hair was brown and we clearly wore less make-up.  

Before Shauna was my friend she was my boss.  I was interviewing for a different position on staff and she was the Creative Director.  Thankfully she liked me enough to hire me for a totally different job as part of her team. I cringe at the thought of how my life would be different today if Shauna had not pulled me into her life.  Yikes!  This was before her books, before there were babies, and before she moved home to Chicago.


There are some people that come into your life and change it for the better--forever.  Shauna is that person for me. I did not know life could be lived that way.  Shauna instilled such a value of "what we do is important".  Creating church and a sacred space for people to meet God was important, and a gift to do every week.  I actually loved going to work every day.  We both left our jobs at the church in the same season, but continue to be friends.  We don't talk every day.  We are more e-mail friends than phone friends, but that doesn't negate her importance in my life. Shauna makes me want to be MORE: more creative, more myself, more connected, more loving, more authentic.


 I have countless vivid memories together, but one moment stands out in particular.  We would occasionally go to lunch at On The Border with Amy and Angela.  Oh how I miss those lunches!  There was a time, O.K. a year, when I was sure my marriage would not make it.  I didn't think I could survive one more day, let alone a lifetime.  Then our lunch went on a bit too long with me essentially in tears through two bowls of queso.  Shauna continually told me that she knew marriages that did not make it, and she really believed that ours would change; that we would survive and be O.K. in the end.  I didn't believe her, not even a little bit.  But when Shauna talks people listen, and there was a part of me that soaked her words into my bones.  Thank God she was right.  And like she writes in Bittersweet, "After seven years of marriage apologies are sexy."

You can read excepts from Bittersweet and Cold Tangerines on Shauna's website.

Don't forget to enter the giveaway for your signed copy of Bittersweet here.

The winner will be announced tomorrow.