The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

None of us chooses the hands we’re dealt in life. No one asks for heartache or poverty, illness or abuse. In spite of our sometimes bad decision-making, we don’t actually invite these tragedies into our lives. And while we have little choice in the matter of bad circumstances, we do have a choice in how we handle them. So we find that place inside ourselves that gives us strength. We embrace the love that is given to us and we try to return it. We find that momentary ray of sunlight in our hearts and we hang on to that for as long as we can. “The world will give you that once in a while, a brief time-out; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.”
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a wonderful journey into the power of love and strength and finding the truth. We follow sweet, flawed little Lily and simple, rough-around-the-edges (yet terribly endearing) Rosaleen on their ill-conceived escape from a life of pain and suffering in search of answers and a safe home. They find all of this when they knock on the door to the pink house of August Boatwright, her honey bees, and the Daughters of Mary. All of this wrapped perfectly in the most beautifully written tale I have ever read. It is filled with delicious similes, metaphors, humor and tenderness. It is a coming of age trek into the deepest places within ourselves.
While we all have a certain need to find answers to the darker questions shading our lives, we must be careful to search only for the answers we can actually deal with. Sometimes the truth is a far tougher pill to swallow than the bitterness of not knowing.
That being said, it is a journey worth taking.
Dip your feet in the water, lie back and let the sun warm your face for awhile and simply relish the moment. I know sometimes they seem few and far between, but when those moments come ... they are sweet as honey.