I’m not really the wears pink and lace and drinks Cosmo’s type of girl with a wonderfully bubbly personality. I’m not even really the kind of girl who likes to talk about when I’ll have babies and make a home that smells of vanilla and cinnamon all the time. I hate crying, but I do it more often than I’ll admit I do. That just ain’t me. However…. I love visiting houses that smell like Yankee Candles set up camp there, and I love meeting women who talk about babies and do girly things and giggle a lot… because they’re good at it and I’m not… and I appreciate people like that. I have a friend, Holly, who is all of this, plus sugar and spice and everything in the entire world that’s nice. I love Holly. She completes the part of me that’s lacking. Anyways… she told me excitedly about this wonderful book she’s been reading and last week, she sneakily put it in my purse for me to take home. I did, but as I started reading, I knew I would hate myself afterwards…. because I felt hot tears well up in my eyes after the first 2 chapters. I hate books that make me cry. In fact, I avoid them like the plague. So the fact that I continued to read slightly baffled me. Why did I keep reading? Well… I was intrigued by the way Shauna writes… she writes how I think. And even though the things she wrote about didn’t necessarily speak directly into the position I’m currently in in my own life, her sweet honesty and thoughts resonated on a deeper level. I don’t have a baby…. but I can appreciate her journey and her raw-ness may have convinced me that it might not be such a horrible experience when I get there. I’m not Shauna, I’m Kate. But reading through her stories opened me up to the raw-ness and beauty in the everyday and she reminds me that living isn’t about waiting for the next exciting thing to come along, but it’s about teaching our hearts to recognize the beauty of every little thing.

“I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don’t want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift, who will use it up and wring it out and drag it around like a favorite sweater.”

So if you get the chance to read this summer…. I’d recommend picking up Cold Tangerines, by Shauna Niequist. You may cry, but you might also be allowing yourself to enjoy something that might change your perspective on the everyday.

I’m not really the wears pink and lace and drinks Cosmo’s type of girl with a wonderfully bubbly personality. I’m not even really the kind of girl who likes to talk about when I’ll have babies and make a home that smells of vanilla and cinnamon all the time. I hate crying, but I do it more often than I’ll admit I do. That just ain’t me. However…. I love visiting houses that smell like Yankee Candles set up camp there, and I love meeting women who talk about babies and do girly things and giggle a lot… because they’re good at it and I’m not… and I appreciate people like that. I have a friend, Holly, who is all of this, plus sugar and spice and everything in the entire world that’s nice. I love Holly. She completes the part of me that’s lacking. Anyways… she told me excitedly about this wonderful book she’s been reading and last week, she sneakily put it in my purse for me to take home. I did, but as I started reading, I knew I would hate myself afterwards…. because I felt hot tears well up in my eyes after the first 2 chapters. I hate books that make me cry. In fact, I avoid them like the plague. So the fact that I continued to read slightly baffled me. Why did I keep reading? Well… I was intrigued by the way Shauna writes… she writes how I think. And even though the things she wrote about didn’t necessarily speak directly into the position I’m currently in in my own life, her sweet honesty and thoughts resonated on a deeper level. I don’t have a baby…. but I can appreciate her journey and her raw-ness may have convinced me that it might not be such a horrible experience when I get there. I’m not Shauna, I’m Kate. But reading through her stories opened me up to the raw-ness and beauty in the everyday and she reminds me that living isn’t about waiting for the next exciting thing to come along, but it’s about teaching our hearts to recognize the beauty of every little thing.

“I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don’t want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift, who will use it up and wring it out and drag it around like a favorite sweater.”

So if you get the chance to read this summer…. I’d recommend picking up Cold Tangerines, by Shauna Niequist. You may cry, but you might also be allowing yourself to enjoy something that might change your perspective on the everyday.