It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way

It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Stranded
By: Lysa TerKeurst

"Sometimes to get your life back, you have to face the death of what you thought your life would look like."

We don't like to relinquish control of our lives. But there is an Author far better than any of us at writing stories. Lysa was reminded of this in a lot of hard ways and has written this book to share how this truth wrecked and restored her life. She is honest and realistic about pain and suffering, but does not shy away from the bold truths of the Bible, even if we don't want to hear them.

I'm not currently going through a time of grief or loss or disappointment (unless you count quarantining from the Coronavirus) but I've gone through loss before and I am sure I will again. This will be a book I come back and read again when I am overwhelmed and unable to reconcile my feelings with what I know to be true of God.

One phrase that had helped me in my time of loss that she uses is that God will not waste your pain. I appreciate these words because it acknowledges the very real pain and it doesn't explain it away or make you feel like you shouldn't feel what you are feeling. Feel your feelings and know that nothing will be wasted.

I also loved her description that we are struggling between two gardens (Eden and Heaven), reminding us that this is not our best life; this life will have suffering because of what happened in the first garden, but it's not the final garden. All of her analogies using 'dust' are so perceptive and profound. God created out of dust in the garden. And she says, "What if shattering is the only way to get dust back to its basic form so that something new can be made?" She provides tangible visuals using dust to help us understand how anything good could come from such pain. I think this was such a clever and meaningful theme to encompass this book.

Not currently in a season of hardship, I can't fully assess whether I would find comfort in this book during a time of grief, but from my perspective right now, I feel this book will resonate with most who read it. She is honest, transparent, and hopeful. She writes from a place of compassion and humility not of achievement and perfection. It is Scripture-filled. I appreciate this because she didn't just fill a book with her own musings and experience, but filtered her experience through what God says about it, letting God's words be the most important words, not hers. We lose that in a lot of books these days.

The book would make for a good Bible Study, but I read it by myself and still benefitted from it. It is structured with a section after each chapter that reviews the main points she covered, the Scriptures that were mentioned, useful discussion questions, and then a prayer. I really liked this formatting because it would be helpful as a future reference or a place to go when you need Scripture or a prayer when you are at a loss for what to do next.

I also want to point out that her writing is very good. It seems nerdy to say this, but her use of alliteration, allegory, and word play was well done. Her illustrations were spot on and made sense (unlike some writers who just try to throw in stories to name drop or make themselves look a particular way).

This book is full of great truths. Some of them may be hard to hear when our pain is raw, but we cannot afford to avoid truth to flounder in self-pity and despair.

"God doesn’t want you or me to suffer. But He will allow it in doses to increase our trust. Our pain and suffering isn’t to hurt us. It’s to save us. To save us from a life where we are self-reliant, self-satisfied, self-absorbed, and set up for the greatest pain of all… separation from God.”