Shauna Niequist

I happened to read this right as our first real table was delivered for our new home. This meditation on gathering around the table and making your home a place where you can host the people you love with warmth and honesty and not make it a perform was perfectly timed.

“We don’t learn to love each other well in the easy moments. Anyone is good company at a cocktail party. Love is born when we misunderstand one another and make it right.”

“It’s those five faces around the table that show more keep me sane and keep me safe. That protect me from the pressures, arrows, and land mines of daily life. And it isn’t because we do all the same things, live all the same ways, believe all the same things. We are single and married, liberal and conservative, runners and adamant non-athletes, mothers and not. Those of us who are mothers do it all differently. From cry it out to family bed, from stay at home to full-time work.” show less

This book was not what I expected - not a critique, just an observation.

I wanted to share where my reactions come from in case it helps someone decide whether to read it or recommend or gift it to someone else. Upfront TLDR: if you're on the fence, go for it.

All I knew about Shauna Niequist prior to reading this was that she comes from a Christian perspective and is a writer. I've never read any of her other books, knew nothing more about her background or her life, don't follow her. After show more I finished reading, I googled her and now know the headline view of her situation. This book seems to presume the reader comes into the book holding at least a passing curiosity if not a personal interest in her life. Maybe many did, do, or will. I personally don't.

This is less a book and more a collection of life vignettes during and coming out of the pandemic. It feels like reading from someone's diary - raw, vulnerable, intimate to the point of fragility. Her heart is laid bare on these pages and the writing is both messy and beautiful. (That's a compliment.)

She alludes to seismic life events and stressors - marital/relational, church/job, and health - and the resulting personal and life changes that have and continue to result from them. Her perspective feels less 'settled' ("this is how I made it through and how you might too") and more in progress.

I think reaction to this book will be different for those who feel personally connected to Shauna (including Christian women bloggers/podcasters). Without that personal connection, reading this felt like a one-sided conversation or being brought along for part of her therapeutic journey.

If you're looking for perspective into your own situation, how to deal and heal, you'll find a very personal account of how she's dealt with her own. You can't help but root for her (or anyone hurting!) to heal and overcome and appreciate how and where joy, peace, and hope is found. At its core though, this book seems more about and for her than for the reader.

A recurring theme in this book is the vital importance of physical presence and connection - a small and carefully curated community of friends, family, and neighbors who glue us together (and back together when parts of us break). If you have that in your life, you've already got something way more valuable than this book. If you don't, or have someone around you who needs that, doing the work to build it will be far more precious and better use of time than reading about how it works in someone else's. show less

I felt that this was a “bait and switch” as the book description (printed directly on the back of the book) promises “a collection of stories about God, and about life, and about the thousands of daily ways in which an awareness of God changes and infuses everything.”

Just like several other readers, I wanted more of God in this book, and less of Shauna. She explains in the conclusion that readers shouldn't expect a devotional, that it is a personal exploration of her life and her show more faith, but it was way too personal, like a journal no one else should be reading. And I often had to read between the lines to find anything about faith (hers or others). She often referred to her house church, but that isn’t the same as sharing about her personal relationship with God.

She is extremely insecure about her writing, yet also mentions repeatedly how she is a writer (after all, this is her second book). I found her writing to be excessively overworked and distractingly descriptive, to the point where I sometimes lost the thread of what she was writing about. Unfortunately she writes like an immature high school girl, yet the book is most likely to be read by adult women. There may be a small niche of readers that this book will resonate with, but I’m not in that segment of the population.

I think she (and her publisher) were overly confident that readers will relate to Shauna’s experiences and emotions. And that they will learn and grow from reading this book. The only thing I learned is this is the last of her books I’ll be reading.

If you want to learn about Shauna’s eating disorders and body image issues, jealousies, insecurities about motherhood, friendship, and her “writing” – this is the book for you. show less

This is the first of Shauna's books that I have read and it was completely different from what I was expecting in the best of ways.

I was expecting something similar to most of the other Christian books that are available - a lot of 'how to be a "better" Christian' with a bit of Scripture and a few personal stories thrown in. Instead, I found myself reading what felt like a series of handwritten letters sent over time by a dear friend who has moved far away but with whom I now keep in touch show more via correspondence. Part memoir and part reflection and encouragement, Shauna has a gift for putting words together in beautiful ways and is not afraid to share her heart. There were many times when I looked up from the book and said to my husband, "She writes the way I think and is saying some of the things that I have written in my own journal entries. She speaks my language!" There aren't many authors I feel that way about. Ann Voskamp is one; Morgan Harper Nichols another. Now Shauna is part of that group for me.

Chapter 40, especially, felt like it was written to my very soul and gave me hope that there *are* people who come out the other side of seasons like the one I am in right now with their faith intact. It encouraged me to know that there are people out there who have felt (and feel) the same disillusionment with the church that I have been experiencing, who have been forged by fire as they have questioned and unlearned and deeply considered walking away, but who have chosen to stay and rebuild. There is something so healing in just knowing that I am not alone and that this season of demolition can lead not just to the death of something but to new life.

Thank you, Shauna. I loved it. show less