This book swallowed me whole. As soon as it found its way into my Target cart (along with a new swimsuit, coffee mug, beverage coasters and one or two other things I didn’t need), I couldn’t wait to sit down, coffee in hand and read the first chapter. It only took a page or two before I was nodding along with the words in the book, feeling like God Himself must have ordained this Target trip. He does that you know–ordains Target trips.
I fell in love with the way Lysa TerKeurst put words to the feelings I’m afraid to say out loud, or the feelings I don’t know how to say out loud in her last book, Uninvited so my expectations were high for It’s Not Supposed To Be This Way. Had I never heard of her, the title of this book would have drawn me in anyway. Feeling upside down, worn out and a little picked on by God at times, I have found myself whispering those same words often. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” “I didn’t plan this for my life.” “It’s not supposed to be this way.” As I read through Lysa’s oh-so-relatable stories, personal thoughts and desperate prayers, I began to understand how attached I am to normal. Over and over again, I come to this reconciliation that my faith is firmly tied to expectation and normalcy.
Here’s the thing about normal. We don’t know how attached we are to normal until normal goes away. You find out who your people are when normal goes away and you find out who people are when their normal goes away. I didn’t realize that I had an expectation of how my life was supposed to work out until it started to go in a direction that I hadn’t planned for. I spent too-many-to-count sleepless nights voicing my objections and reminding God of all the things that I did right that was supposed to keep any of this from happening.
The conclusion that I keep circling back to and trying to step over is this: I expect that if I do the right things, life will go according to plan and bad things won’t happen to me. And since we’re being honest, I think it’s quite unfair when I do these right things and bad things happen anyway. The blow of unexpected circumstances quite honestly makes me feel like God didn’t get it right. You’ve got the wrong girl, God. Breakups, job rejections, best friend fights? Sure, that feels normal enough; I’ll take that on with you. Funerals, divorces and health scares? Uh-uh, not for me. Those upside-downs are meant for someone stronger, someone who can inspire people with bold faith and a get-through-it attitude. That’s not me. And truthfully, I don’t really want to take the journey to becoming one of those people. Because I am very aware that those people are dragged across the floor of hell before they become a person with the unshakable faith that I find so inspiring. The author of this book, Lysa TerKeurst is one of those people and while I would love to inspire people with my faith the way that she does, I’m not too proud to say that I’d rather not go through any of the things she walks through in her book.
It’s Not Supposed To Be This Way has helped me process my life and what’s happened in it–for better or for worse–through the lens of God. Filtering hurt and pain through a godly lens is demanding and honest work. It takes surrender and trust and a few other Jesus words that feel a little too hard. Feeling sorry for myself comes easier to me than trusting God and deliberately making the choice to search for His goodness in all the things. But the goodness is there. And this book reminded me of that. Maybe you’re not ready for this book. Maybe you are. Maybe it’s too soon to even consider that there could be a glimpse of goodness in what you’re facing. I promise you that this book will not slap Jesus-heals-all band-aids over your raw, busted-open heart. The author gets it and is refreshingly honest about what’s going through her head while she walks through a long season that includes both infidelity and cancer. Two words that I hope are never a part of my story, but I know they might be a part of yours. If they are, I beg you to read this book. If infertility, divorce, miscarriage is a part of your story, read this book. If a devastating breakup or divorce are a part of your today, read this book. Whatever life looks like for you today, if you find yourself whispering the words “it’s not supposed to be this way,” then this book is for you.
What I Journaled
“Humans are very attached to outcomes. We say we trust God but behind the scenes we work our fingers to the bone and our emotions into a tangled fray trying to control our outcomes. We praise God when our normal looks like what we thought it would. We question God when it doesn’t. And walk away from Him when we have a sinking suspicion that God is the one who set fire to the hope that was holding us together.”
“Sometimes to get your life back, you have to face the death of what you thought your life would look like.”
“If we don’t open up a way to process our disappointments, we’ll be tempted to let Satan rewrite God’s love story as a negative narrative, leaving us more than slightly suspicious of our Creator.”
“This is how the formula should calculate: hard time plus healing time plus staying faithful to God should equal the exact good outcome we were counting on.”
“To trust God is to trust His timing. To trust God is to trust His way. God loves me too much to answer my prayers at any other time than the right time and in any other way than the right way.”
“No time showing up and bringing compassion to another human is ever a waste of time.”
“If God thought you could handle the promise today, He would lift you up today.”
“I know I must walk through God’s process before I see His fulfilled promise.”
“And that’s when it occurred to me that if you get desperate enough you’ll go all in with living slow for a while. You’ll quiet down all the outside noise so God’s voice can become the loudest voice in your life. Now, I realize, none of us can just quit life when life falls apart. But we can quit some things.”
“If you have ever experienced an unexpected darkness, a silence and stillness you aren’t used to, know that these hard times, these devastating disappointments, these seasons of suffering are not for nothing. They will grow you. They will shape you. They will soften you. They will allow you to experience God’s comfort and compassion. But you will find life-giving purpose and meaning when you allow God to take your painful experiences and comfort others. You will be able to share a unique hope because you know exactly what it feels like to be them.”