Ordinary Grace

I have been putting my gardens to bed for the winter...

...and I have been cleaning like crazy now that the workman are finally finished with the inside part of our seemingly never-ending construction project.

So, of course, while I am working I have been listening to this book about a family in a small town in Minnesota in the 1950's.   I am really glad my book club picked this book for December!  The writing is so brilliant...I had trouble choosing quotes to share...there are just so many:

"God never promised us an easy life.  He never promised that we wouldn't suffer, that we wouldn't feel despair and loneliness and confusion and desperation.  What he did promise was that in our suffering we would never be alone.  And though we may sometimes make ourselves blind and deaf to his presence he is beside us and around us and within us always.  We are never separated from his love.  And he promised us something else, the most important promise of all.  That there would be surcease.  That there would be an end to our pain and our suffering and our loneliness, that we would be with him and know him, and this would be heaven."