Book Review: The In-Between

The whole time I was reading The In-Between: Embracing the Tension Between Now and the Next Big Thing, I thought…”Wow, Jeff Goins must have been watching me!”  Lately the Lord has really been working on me about not being so restless all the time.  I’m typically always multi-tasking…but always struggling with the idea of being “fully present” where I am.  As I get older…and particularly as my daughter gets older, I am cognizant of the need to embrace every moment in order to fully appreciate what God is trying to teach me and recognize where He is trying to grow me.  This book is a great resource for anyone regardless of whether or not you realize you are currently “In-Between” something.  A lot of times we all focus on planting the seeds and the harvesting of the crops, but how often do we really step back and appreciate the season of growing?  This book has challenged me just to BE.

I highlighted several things while reading and have posted them below…

• This is it: this is as spectacular as it gets, and you have a choice, to be there or not.
• That’s how I want to be.  That’s who I want to be: deeply present in the present, in the mess, in the waiting, in the entirely imperfect right now.
• I’m starting to see the value of the times in between the big moments in life.
• If we reserve our joy only for the experiences of a lifetime, we may miss the life in the experience.
• Waiting is the great grace.  It’s a subtle sign for those with eyes to see, reminding us there is work yet to be done–not just around us, but in us.  We are still in progress, unfinished masterpieces full of incompletion.
• I’m the one who chooses to be restless, the one who gives in to temptations to find the next thrill, while refusing the joy of what’s in front of me.
• More wasn’t better.  Slower was better–fewer thrills, less hype, more memories.
• We need to learn to live in this tension, to appreciate what we have and still hope for.
• Through the angst and anticipation, in our longing to have and be more, we need to learn to enjoy this place.
• Changes doesn’t happen in a moment, nor does it always come slowly over time.  It’s happening here and now, every day, in the big and small.  And every moment is a chance to choose.  To not only accept the grace in front of us, but to boldly change the course we’ve been on for so very long.
• We don’t get to choose how many days of life we have let, but we can choose how to spend them.
• I’m inspired to live like I mean it–to make the most of my days, however many or few I have left.
• Our lives are full of inconvenient setbacks, not due to some great cosmic mistake but because of some divine purpose we don’t comprehend.
• In the waiting, we become.
• Most people understand that in order to get from one place to the next, you must travel; you have to move.  But few are willing to accept this in areas of personal growth.  We can’t stand still; we will stagnate.  The irony is that when we think we are standing still, we are actually growing the most.  What gets us to our destinations are the pauses, the breaks, the in-between.
  So it is with this wonderful experiment we call life.  We don’t slow down when we should, so we must be stopped.  Diverted.  Stalled.  And these moments–these huge inconveniences, if we can dare call them that anymore–set us aright, reminding us not only of how far we’ve come but also of the fact that we are not done.
  Yet.