in honor of my recent completion of shauna niequist’s bittersweet, and of my pending reading of cold tangerines and her latest release, bread and wine (saving those for my next trip over cinco de mayo weekend), i’ve decided to occasionally post a “note from niequist”-an inspirational line or series of lines from one of her books to either evoke self-reflection, or simply to serve as a bit of wisdom for your day.

considering the fact that i dog-eared nearly a third of the pages as i voraciously tore through bittersweet on my flight to nashville at the end of february, these first few noteworthy nuggets of inspiration will probably be from that collection of “thoughts on change, grace, and learning the hard way.” at any rate, i hope that shauna will inspire you as much as she has inspired this shawna.

the world is changing all the time, at every moment. someone is falling in love right now, and someone is being born. a dream is coming true in some city or small town, and right at the same moment, another dream is crashing and crumbling. a marriage is ending somewhere, and it’s somebody’s wedding day, maybe even right in the same town. it’s all happening.

if you dig in and fight the changes, they will smash you to bits. they’ll 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 who holds it all together, you’ll find yourself drawn along to a whole new place, and there’s 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.

“learning to swim” | pages 20-21 | shauna niequist | bittersweet