How To Move Forward When Life Throws A Wrench In Your Plans

In so many ways, life is a balancing act. While it's important to know what we want (you can't hit a target you can't see)—life has a way of throwing unexpected variables in our direction. Even the best plan is at the mercy of the unknown, which Kate Bowler, author of the much-anticipated memoir No Cure for Being Human, knows quite well. At the age of 35, Kate received a serious cancer diagnosis, putting her life plans on hold and bringing her face-to-face with some of life's harshest yet most beautiful truths. With refreshing insights on our culture's "best life now" advice industry, and themes of faith and ambition, this book has something to teach everybody about what it means to be human.

The room was a miniature sanctuary, unheated and inelegant. The floor was loose gravel, and someone had nailed together some benches to face a chunk of stone serving as an altar. But the light of the setting sun—an incandescent orange—poured through the windows and lit up the walls, which were covered with graffiti both fresh and faded.

I ran my fingers along the black ink covering the altar and the pen marking gouging the soft wooden walls. Almost every inch of it was covered with words.

I miss you every day.

Please let my daughter be the way she was before.

Did you make it to heaven, my love?

Helen, I am weak. But you already knew that.