Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet Quotes

“Too often we try to avoid that scary place where we love so deep, so much, our hearts could break. But without the bitterness, we would never appreciate the sweetness.”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“I don’t want to be a hungry soul just for a season. I want to live hunger. This is what draws me to Him. This is what fills every single bitter circumstance with the opportunity to know Him more. This is what brings me to the sweetness of His presence. And hope happens here at this nexus of bitter and sweet.”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“Fear loses oxygen when every moment suspends itself under the purpose of bringing Him glory, of knowing His name and His nature. Sometimes, instead of leading us up and out of those very fears, big and small, He lets us live them. He gives us over to them. Because it’s in this giving over to our fears that we find the perfect love that frees us from them. Forever.”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“I could spend most days looking for the golden moment ahead, when the gold is already in front of me. Available for every messy minute.”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“My figurative position of confidence before Him, as a daughter in whom He delighted, was one long exhalation of relief. I didn’t earn this position; I inherited it, and that made my safety all the more secure, no matter His response. The ability He gave me to ask started, first, with Him. From this angle, how could I not ask?”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“I often pictured the future from the perspective of fear, as if imagining the worst-case scenario might allow me to prepare myself. But God comes kindly to prepare, and with a grace He’ll release only in that moment, not in advance.”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“We had no logical explanation for how we’d even gotten this far. God was our story — the whole story, the only story.”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“If my chief end as a mother is anything less than knowing Him and carrying His glory in my life, I will walk through these years empty.”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“My mess wouldn’t forever be a curse. One day it would be my crown. One day it would tell the story that, yes, He is good . . . to me.”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“Jesus is big in my small, unseen moments. Glorious monotony. He came for these very days.”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“We realized that our lives aren’t, in fact, a series of rewards for doing things “right.” They are strung-together surprises that continue to speak more of who He is than who we aren’t.”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“We realized that our lives aren’t, in fact, a series of rewards for doing things “right.” They are strung-together surprises that continue”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“Fear loses oxygen when every moment suspends itself under the purpose of bringing Him glory, of knowing His name and His nature.”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“I felt as if I couldn’t possibly find peace, here, stuck between the numbing repetition of caregiving and the pandemonium of growing life, but could these moments, too, be purposed for great glory?”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“So in my mind, God’s question during that encounter in church had less to do with the content — having a family — and more to do with His nature. Why would He put this desire deep within my core only to ask me to relinquish it? Why invite me to travel a road with a dead end? It took me three days to respond. I knew the right answer, but I couldn’t speak it. Instead, I spent hours picturing a life like the one God was asking me to consider, void of family but full of Him. Could I love a God who might take away the very desire He put in me? Could I trust the leadership of a Man when the mystery He offered wasn’t wondrous but perplexing? Could I further engage with the very One on whose watch I was wounded? Somehow, out of this darkness, which seemed so bleak, came a response that I didn’t expect. It was so unlike me that I knew I was being overshadowed. The Holy Spirit erected a resolve in my soul that my flesh could not have produced. Yes! I was made for this yes, and the God whose Spirit meshed with mine inside of me produced it. The question and His answer, from within me, changed everything. Yes, I could love Him. Yes, I could trust His leadership. Yes, I could even find delight and joy and contentment living from the underside of mystery — perplexity. Yes, there was a dance to be danced in this valley.”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“Like most pain that we withhold from God’s touch, my paper pregnancy (apparently now also barren) had fostered a fermentation within my heart. My hurt was expanding beyond “just” the issues of childbearing and was touching the broader vision for my life. I was looking at life through the lens of being overlooked by God. I kept my eyes closed to keep the others around me from view — those whom, I naively assumed, could more easily proclaim the truths of God in song because they had what I wanted. Then I saw a vision on the back of my eyelids: the word family scribbled across a piece of paper. The paper had a nail through its center, affixing it to a cross. The Lord whispered inside my spirit as I saw it: If you never have a family, will you still love Me? I walked out of church that day, hardened. Had it really come to this? The very idea that what I most feared — becoming stamped with the word barren — was now not only a possibility but a suggestion . . . and from God?”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“how”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“My question was not, Is God good? But instead, Is He good to me? I was overlooked. Forgotten. Not important enough to bless, and easy enough to dismiss. Cursed. If the mother whose womb had been opened was living her reward, what had the barren one done to carry such a vacancy? This question wove itself into the backdrop of my every interaction with those who had what I didn’t. And it was the question (and its hidden assumptions) I was learning had to be brought into my conversation with God if I would ever find life through barrenness.”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things

“examined in Scripture. I often pictured the future from the perspective of fear, as if imagining the worst-case scenario might allow me to prepare myself. But God comes kindly to prepare, and with a grace He’ll release only in that moment, not in advance.”
― Sara Hagerty, Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet: Tasting the Goodness of God in All Things