The SISTERCHICKS Series, by Robin Jones Gunn…Check it out!

Over the last few weeks, I have been reading a few books by Robin Jones Gunn in her SISTERCHICK series.

The last one I read was called SISTERCHICKS in Gondolas! 

Gunn defines SISTERCHICKS in this way:

SISTERCHICK n. : friend who shares the deepest wonders of your heart, loves you like a sister, and provides a reality check when you’re being a brat.

This particular story is about a divorced fifty-ish woman named Jenna who is invited to Venice by a missionary friend to come and cook for a small retreat.  She takes her sister-in-law along, and we laugh with them through their sometimes hilarious adventures in a foreign country. 

The back of the book says it better than I could…

“Coming out of a time of dark shadows in their lives, these two friends dive into a new season of refreshing and realize that sometimes when serving God, the most important thing to do is just show up…and watch for goodness and mercy to follow close behind…”

Besides enjoying the adventures of exploring new places with the characters, I find myself looking for the nuggets of truth tucked throughout the pages.

Like this one.

Jenna and her sister-in-law are taking a gondola tour with the retreat participants through the beautiful sites of Venice when she is overcome with longing.  It is one of my favorite parts of the whole book.  Because we all have longings, and because Gunn injects such truth.      

Without warning, a pervasive sadness came over me.  The sharp sting of this melancholy was familiar, but I hadn’t felt its forceful pull in a long time.  Yet it didn’t matter that I had put those emotions far away from me.  The feelings were elemental.  The longings were easily recognizable.

I wanted to be loved.  I wanted to be married.  I wanted to be married to a man who loved me and wouldn’t leave me.

There, I admitted it.  In such a place as this on such a night as this, I wish I didn’t have to be alone.  I wish I weren’t so alone.  I wish my life hadn’t the way it did.

The tears came before I could stop them.

Turning my head as far away from the others as I could, I pretended to carefully examine the water and the distant island.  I actually was deep inside myself, standing on the edge of an emotional precipice.  These feelings nearly had overpowered me more than once in the past.  I knew what it meant to look down into such darkness.

An evening breeze skimmed across the lagoon and dried my tears as quickly as I shed them.  For a few moments I let myself wish that a wonderful man would fall from the sky into my life.  I wished he would find me irresistible, sweep me up in his arms, and love me forever.

I blinked back the self-pity tears and tried to remember what I had taken away from those counseling sessions so long ago.  The counselor had given me a potent weapon to use in moments like this: Thankfulness, a grateful spirit.

I tried to think of one thing for which I was thankful.  I knew that, with a handful of darts forged from a spirit of appreciation, I could take down the dragons of doubt and vultures of self-pity.

It took a moment before I was composed enough to pick up the first dart and throw it at the target of my deep longing.

“This,” I whispered.  “All of this.  I’m thankful for this—the travel, the experiences, the people.”

If you are looking for some good summer reading, I highly recommend the SISTERCHICKS series.  They aren’t so involving that you will ignore your kids for a week straight.  Lol!  But, for me, they provided a delightful retreat during snatches of time and made me think of my own life and friends with a thankful heart.  A good thing, no?