This was such a good book. Sarah, the author, had her life planned until she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of twenty seven. All her plans came to a screeching halt. She came very near death and decided to start new across the country. She was going to take a year to get her life together and then move back and pick up where she left off. God had other plans and one day she ran into a a Somali refugee woman and her five girls. Sarah's heart was broken for them and she decided to help. This memoir is about Sarah's journey through her cancer and how God put her back together when she gave to another broken person. Sarah felt invisible in a world of breast cancer and hospitals and the Somali family was also invisible to the people around them. She knew what it felt like to be lost and she was determined to help this family. Through her giving spirit she found new meaning for her life and wholeness again. It is a powerful story of how when we reach out to others, even in our darkest moments, God redeems. We find God when we are willing to open our hearts to others. "I began to see God as both my Father and the Great Physician. He was the infinitely loving, infinitely wise parent standing against the Procedure Room wall of life, watching me suffer as tears wellled up in His eyes. He was waiting for the moment when the trial had finished its work in my life, ready to pick me up the second it was done and carry me home." That last sentence is so powerful to me. It helps put trials and pain on this earth into perspective. God hasn't left us when we go through hard times, not at all. He is there right beside us, hurting with us. Just like a parent watches their child struggle, wanting to step in but knowing we can't because a lesson is being learned. God wants us to grow and we can't do that without a trail or two. "God, I always thought I was going to be the beautiful, fragrant rose that bloomed for You in the middle of a prominent centerpiece. But now I see that I may only ever be a crocus in the corner of Your garden. And I just want to tell You if that's what You have planned for me, if I am meant to be an obscure flower in the corner of the expansive garden, I will live there and I will love You and I will bloom just for You-only, always, ever." Our lives rarely pan out the way we thought, they often take turns we never saw coming. But God has us right where He wants us, all we have to do is bask in that and bloom, bloom right where He planted us because it is right where we need to be. I highly recommend this book.
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