“I was here. I saw beauty. I embraced it.”
How do you live out extravagant love in the everyday moments? How do you celebrate grace when your life turns out differently than the one you dreamed?
Kara Tippetts discovered how to find joy in the small moments of life. She learned how to hold tight to hope even while battling intense physical and emotional pain. And she lived out the truth that God can redeem any story.
In her final book, Kara offers gentle reflections on living and dying well. She invites us to cultivate soft hearts even when we face great disappointment. Her ideas for living are hard-won, wrestled with in the crucible of family, illness, and faith. And her constant reminder is that whether we are in the midst of dark days or mundane moments Jesus is always there, life is surprisingly beautiful, and God is forever good.
Kara Tippetts’s story was not a story of disease, although she lost her battle with terminal cancer. It was not a story of saying goodbye, although she was intentional in her time with her husband and four children. Kara’s story was one of seeing God in the hard and in the good. It was one of finding grace in the everyday. And it was one of knowing “God with us” through fierce and beautiful friendship.
In Just Show Up, Kara and her close friend, Jill Lynn Buteyn, write about what friendship looks like in the midst of changing life seasons, loads of laundry, and even cancer. Whether you are eager to be present to someone going through a difficult time or simply want inspiration for pursuing friends in a new way, this eloquent and practical book explores the gift of silence, the art of receiving, and what it means to just show up.
David C Cook approached me to write this manuscript soon after I was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic cancer. I will not forget the the meeting when the team from DCC sat with Jason and I and began to dream the telling of this story- the naming of grace in the midst of suffering. There was a hesitancy from all of us if I would have the strength, the ability, the days to write the book. We all felt strongly that we could partner to write this book. Writing The Hardest Peace proved to be a gift to write. The writing of this book helped me through the diagnosis of cancer finding more and more corners in my body: my brain, my bones, my liver, my lymph system. The writing of this book caused me to look at my story and seek the grace to walk this hard path with cancer.
I often fail, I’m often found in weakness and brokenness, but through it all I am met- always met in love. This is not simply my story and journey with cancer. It is a book written to appeal to us all as we meet the bitter edges of life on this side of eternity. In the brokenness of our unmet expectations of life, will we look for Jesus and His abundant love? Or will we tumble into bitterness and anger that leave us utterly self focused and disappointed by the hard in our story each of us are asked to receive.
The pages are an accounting of the faithfulness of the Author of life. I am simply the teller and namer of the grace. Look intentionally at your own story today? Could you use encouragement to live near to Jesus? If that is a longing of your heart, I invite you to join me on this hard journey of looking, naming, meeting Jesus when the story is written in His beautiful sovereignty.
From the Back Cover of the Book
Losing myself in the startling light of Kara’s story, I have found who I am, who He is, and more of the meaning of every breath.
—Ann Voskamp, New York Times bestselling author of One Thousand Gifts
Kara Tippetts knows the ordinary days of mothering four kids, the joy of watching her children grow…and the devastating reality of stage-four cancer.
In The Hardest Peace, Kara doesn’t offer answers for when living is hard, but she asks us to join her in moving away from fear and control and toward peace and grace. Most of all, she draws us back to the God who is with us, in the mundane and the suffering, and who shapes even our pain into beauty.
You can also pick up Kara's ebook Big Love: the practice of loving beyond your limits
Living in love takes courage. It takes unbelievable grace and humility to love others well. This book offers grace, ideas, practical help and a story of one broken mama fighting to live well with her children.
