Hanging on to Hard Feelings
Dear Books,
I hang on to hard feelings, have trouble forgiving and moving forward, and feel stuck because of these patterns. I'm at a place in my life where I'm realizing that this habit is holding me back. I need to shed this shit I'm carrying and move forward. Watcha got for me?
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Dear Held Back,
There are some books I call sledgehammer books. These are the ones that hit my heart so squarely that whatever hardness was there shatters under the book’s power. These books soften me and check my dumb ego. They fill me with compassion. There is often Kleenex involved.
Your letter tells me you need a sledgehammer book. A reminder, as it were, that everyone is struggling with something, and that if we zoom out far enough, we can see how these pain-in-the ass people probably battle some of the same demons we do, and that they might, improbably, have something to teach us.
The sledgehammer book I’m recommending to you is Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People by Nadia Bolz-Weber. Nadia is a tattooed, sweary Lutheran pastor who is, in appearance, probably an “unlikely” candidate to lead a church. But that’s why this book works.
Nadia strips Christianity to its studs and kicks all the unnecessary adornment out to the curb. What’s left are raw stories about how we love each other better. And I think that’s what you need, Held Back—a way to see how it’s possible to “shed this shit,” as you called it, and let more love and grace into your life.
“Preferably I could just do it all and be it all and never mess up,” Nadia writes. “That may be what I would prefer, but it is never what I need. I need to be broken apart and put back into a different shape by that merging of things human and divine, which is really screwing up and receiving grace and love and forgiveness rather than receiving what I really deserve.”
By the way, it doesn’t matter if you believe in Jesus or call yourself a Christian or not. Nadia is so good at what she does that at the end of the day, what you’re reading is simply a book about love. Period.
May your heart soften as you read her pages, Held Back. I know mine did.
Much love,
Lara
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