Wonderful... absolutely wonderful! I have my best friend from high school to thank for sending this to me almost three years ago. I have not been led to read it until now, and I am glad I... waited. Sue Monk Kidd is a truly gifted writer and describes my experience of mid-life spiritual transformation through the use of the main metaphor of butterfly metamorphosis. From resisting, crawling along in a diapause holding onto the old self, to being in a cocoon for the past 3 years... feeling the darkness and waiting as Christ was reforming in me. Spiritual transformation is never an easy or pretty process. Sue empathizes sharing her personal experience along with the experience and insights with those of countless great writers and theologians (Merton, Nouwen, St. Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, de Chardin, de Caussade, de Mello, Eckhart, Kierkegaard) as she weaves scriptural references and apologetics into a catechism for mid-life metamorphosis.
While there is no substitute for a good spiritual director, and I am so grateful to have one I treasure meeting with monthly, reading this book was like having Sue walking alongside in the journey, just a half-step ahead directing and reflecting in a way that brings catharsis along with new wings.

I've read a few of Kidd's books, both fiction and a memoir written with her daughter. I enjoyed them all so I gave this a shot. Having read this I'm glad it was written in the midst of a crisis of faith and a midlife crisis in the early 1980s, written well before the books I've read.

If you want to read about Jesus I'd recommend Garry Wills' What Jesus Meant, or Reza Aslan's Zealot. If you want to read about a god within then read A God Within by the late great Rene Dubos.

That said, I will read Kidd's new historical fiction book about Jesus and his wife.

This book is pretty deep and requires a lot of thought. It is great for someone trying to figure out who they are from childhood to today.

Life has a way of throwing surprising events in front of us. When one of these surprises comes our way this book is a good one to have on hand to guide us through and bring us to a new beginning full of a richer and better life. Because of course that is the fear, that a crisis will "thin us out" or begin to diminish the richness and fullness that we have worked so hard to build. Kidd's book assures us that if we face our crisis with honesty and hard work that when we come out the other side there will be joy and a better, fuller life.

I am keeping it around for the next time I am "thrown for a loop" by the inevitable stuff that comes our way.

A great book for a specific demographic. A mid-life reflection, Kidd leads the reader thru her own "dark night of the soul" with reflections on the truths she discovered throughout.

I found that a powerful aspect of her book (as well as her meditations on scripture and understanding of psychology) were the questions she put to herself throughout. They are helpful as a spiritual direction guide for your own journey.

This book was a beautiful contemplation on what it means to wait, confront our pain in crisis, and discover God's love.

I didn't give this book 5 stars because it was so thoroughly saturated with God, Jesus and the Bible. It got 4 stars because she didn't try to sell any of them to me, and the ideas of growth and transformation transcend religion and theism.

Probably, knowing already that she later abandons the strictures of her church tempered my natural revulsion. Plus, I love Monk Kidd in almost anything she does.

Kidd is the one who wrote bestsellers like The Secret Life of Bees, but this book is something totally different from her. It's deeply personal, journeying through a phase in her life characterized by much waiting and change and evolving and growth. I read this one slowly, picking it up periodically and always finding that what I read resonated with me in that moment. This book is probably more geared toward middle-aged or older women (as that was Kidd's age when writing through it) but I found it to be just as relevant to my life as a younger twenty-something still. The metaphor of a cocoon repeats throughout the book and there are many other images and parallels she describes that have still stuck with me in poignant ways. This one is a really good one if you feel like you're in any in-between, waiting season at all.

I think that this book is a great read for anyone who is in a season of waiting as I am in or if you work in counseling others in times of crisis. I love how the author shares her story without speaking as if her way is the only way. She tells her story as if you are right there listening to her tell you about a hard season of life.

Exceptional. I read this book as i was in the throes of and then transitioning out of my life's darkest time. This book was a friend to me in that time. From the other side of the darkness sue helped me believe that this time and what I was learning did not have to go to waste. Exceptional.

I read this one for a summer book group. I have mixed feelings about it, but most of the people in the group LOVED it. There are many places in her story where she puts words to experiences and ways of being that aren't often talked about in American culture. These passages shine and I will carry them with me on my journey.

That said, there are also places where she stories seem contrived and imbelished to fit the very linear narrative. Her narrative is always progressing to an ending in which she comes out a changed, happier, better, different feeling person in all aspects of her life. I get that this makes for better reading, but when a book is documenting the spiritual journey I really want the author to highlight the fact that this is a process more than a destination. For these reasons I could't give it more than a 3.5, but I think its still worth the read.

This book is about transforming the soul. As I approach or enter midlife I am definitely beginning to examine and rethink who I am. This book is a great, contemplative pattern for how we may go about remaking a divine God-centered true essence.

This book was quite different from "The Secret Life of Bees" in that it was personal narrative, but I am always interested in women's stories about their spiritual journeys. I liked this book for that. Somewhere after the conclusion of this book SMK somehow decided that we need to be worshiping "the Sacred Feminine" and it felt to me like her writings veered really off-track at that point and became pretty hard-line feminist and somewhat angry and confused. I liked this book quite a bit and was disappointed that from the conclusion of this book, a gifted author's writings deteriorated quite badly.