The Hardest Peace

I first heard about Kara Tippetts's book THE HARDEST PEACE through Facebook. A former student, a young mother herself, wrote of weeping while alternating between reading the book and hugging her own children. Still she mentioned gaining such strength from Kara's words and her whole story.
I was fortunate enough to be able to ask David C. Cook Publishing for a review copy of the book for review purposes, and I am so glad they allowed me the chance to learn about Kara's journey and her message for us all.

Kara and her husband believed they were living the dream God had planned for them. Four healthy children that they loved to the moon and back, the chance to start a new church in Colorado, and a personal love that grew with each new year of marriage. Then within weeks of moving, Kara found a lump and a new story began -- a story of cancer that spread from her breasts, to her ovaries, to her brain and to the nodes. Rounds of chemo stole her hair, her energy, and her "pretty." Radiation and surgery left a myriad of scars. As the disease progressed, morphed, and became the center of their lives, the question "How will my children live without me?" shouted at her daily, but then her faith allowed her focus to shift. As Kara says, there was no "pretty" left in her life, but everywhere she looked she sees beauty. It may be the visit from a congregation member, or a late night embrace from her husband, or the profound love and selflessness she's felt from even her youngest child. In each tiny moment or grand pronouncement she has chosen to see God. It is his strength she has chosen to feel and acknowledge, both in the book and at her blog MUNDANE FAITHFULNESS. When I checked the blog this week, I see guest posts from dear friends she's made along this journey. Her last posting, just a few days ago, indicate she is weakening. Her thoughts remind me so much of a brother in law who passed away from leukemia 8 years ago. She is eloquent in naming and describing the moments of grace and beauty that flicker even in the harshest moments of destructive disease; she's given words to feelings that I am sure my brother in law, his wife, and his daughters felt. I witnesses moments of that God given strength and grace, but cannot begin to share the impact it had on me and my husband. I will leave you to read Kara Tippett's THE HARDEST PEACE.

Note that this is not the typical "disease" memoir. Kara does not take us through a chronological journey of diagnosis, treatment, and family chaos. From the beginning of the book and continuing throughout she focuses on how living in her weakness she has been able to see and experience life as it should be lived. Of everything in the book what affected me most was her conscious effort to continue to parent her children, not in the physical realm of everyday care, but in the greater picture of effecting their hearts and their understanding of love, sharing, and caring for others. She also has prepared her children for her eventual death and helped them to remain to see a loving God in their life story. Thank you to David C, Cook for allowing me to review this book.

What would it be like to have lost all that you know because of illness, loss of a job, loss of a spouse and be able to say “All I have is but you Lord”? Does all our striving put in us in the presence of Jesus with our good reputations, our drive for success, our need to be accepted? With all that we do, do we manufacture our faith? I knew that when I read the first few pages of this special testimony, I knew that my heart would be captured for something greater.

You may relate to Kara as she shares her life. How children learn to seek the approval of their parents. How an angry father whose very words cut to the soul of his children. How a grandmother that had the unique gift of a child being able to claim that they are the favorite.

To be alive is to be broken. And to be broken is to stand in need of grace in the words of Brennan Manning, Kara was introduced to Jesus and how his grace changed everything.

I love her line in meeting her husband- Jesus was the life change and Jason was the game changer. His love for others was a deep attraction. He had the gift of making others feel known. I think we all desire that. To be known. Her husband set the standard for her in loving Jesus. In their marriage they learned the art of fighting fair and fighting with kindness. Marriage is the gospel. Where sanctification is the life of the marriage along with repentance, without it, a marriage will die. Repentance gives life to relationships. It is in marriage we can create a golden calf idol in how marriage is to fix us. What other golden calf idol are we making to fix us and maybe others? The Cross is our only fix.

How are we testing our boundaries of the depth of love in our relationships?

In Kara’s story, she had a plot change in her life and an understanding that we are not the authors of our lives, but the characters who respond to the author. While the cancer was taking the life out of Kara, their new community and church were giving life by loving her and her family well. You read something like this and you realize that only a few experience this kind of love. In your suffering, you can respond by giving your children the wisdom that you are learning in your suffering. With Kara it was the beauty of the heart and seeing your own worth, your own beauty of who God created you. Our pain can lead to beauty but it is rarely pretty. It can bring the ugliness out of us that we have in our dream world when we are faced in the reality of our own weakness. In learning to live a life courageously broken you realize that brokenness is not to be feared but humbly received. To learn the joy of sharing life with the imperfect is where we are transparent.

The question that we need to ask ourselves in all the ugliness in the world and in our own hurts pain, suffering, Is God good? In a bad marriage, is God Good? In an untimely death of a loved one, is God Good? In the news of bad health, is God Good? In financial ruin, is God Good? In the face of our brokenness, is God Good?

Kara writes her story that we would see the bigger picture in our own story. You can follow her blog http://www.mundanefaithfulness.com/home/2015/3/2/a-room-of-her-own

Behold I am making all things new. Revelation 21:5 God is good indeed. Know him! Behold Him.

My huge thanks to the publisher David C Cook and NetGalley for a ebook to read and review.

This book hits close to home in many ways for me! In a lot of the chapters, change a few details, and it could very well be me writing the words.

I am learning we each have our own battle, challenge, or hard places to walk in life. Just because one is noticeable and dramatic does not make it any more or less impacting on my life than yours is on you.
God uses whatever HE alone sees each heart needs.

"...some through the fire, some through the flood, some through the water but all through the Blood! Some through great sorrow but God gives a song, in the night season and all the day long."

This is not a book you read but one you absorb into your very being praying it becomes a part of who you are as a person, wife and mother.

My, very mistaken, early review of this book within the first couple of chapters was amazement at how closely her "story" mirrored mine. I soon had to eat my words mixed with bitter tears of repentance for my cocky self absorption! MY pitiful tale is nothing next to what She and her family live each and every day.

I am thankful I found this book. I will be getting a hard copy asap as well as each of her other two books.