Infertility affects nearly 6.1 million women and 2.1 million married couples in the United States. Additionally, 25 percent of women of childbearing age will experience a miscarriage and one in 80 pregnancies will end in a stillbirth. In Hope Deferred, we hear the voices of five female scholars from a variety of Christian denominations--Church of the Brethren, Disciples of Christ, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic--as they share their very private stories of painful loss in the hope of bringing comfort and a theological understanding to those who have experienced reproductive loss.
Ashley Davis Bush published Transcending Loss (Berkley) in 1997. Since then she has grown her Transcending Loss brand by becoming a sought-after speaker for professional conferences and by reaching out directly to the bereaved through online communities where she has established tens of thousands of followers. In her new book Hope & Healing for Transcending Loss, Davis Bush offers daily readings--bite-sized lifelines and glimpses of hope for those coping with the death of a loved one. It comprises a brief introduction, a brief conclusion, and 365 daily meditations, plus a few additional pieces for particularly difficult occasions like death date, birth date, anniversary, holidays, and more. Scattered throughout are calming photographs for further contemplation or stillness. Davis Bush's writings focus on normalizing and validating the incredibly painful process of grieving. She offers a compassionate perspective on staying connected to the deceased, focusing on love, living with gratitude, channeling pain to compassion, transcending loss, making meaning, and living into a new self.
Companionship for the lifelong journey of recovery In Addiction and Recovery: A Spiritual Pilgrimage, Martha Postlethwaite--pastor and a person in recovery--reflects on her pilgrimage of healing through valleys of despair and vistas of resurrection. Addiction and Recovery is not just Postlethwaite's story, though. She also draws on the wisdom of pilgrims who have walked other paths to explore themes such as surrender, truth telling, shame, powerlessness, grace, forgiveness, and resurrection. Together, these chronicles bring hope to people who struggle with the disease of addiction and to those who love them. Each chapter ends with questions to reflect on with conversation partners or in a journal, and a spiritual practice. The spiritual practices are related to the chapter themes and serve as samplers, but they can be woven into the reader's own pilgrimage. Readers will recognize themselves in these stories and reflections, learn that they are not alone, and find reasons to hope as they make their own pilgrimage.
I think you may feel as if you are reading my diary. These writings and reflections come straight from my journals and Facebook posts-as they were written.
This spiritual companion for mourners affirms their need to mourn and invites them to journey through their very unique and personal grief. Detailed are the six needs that all mourners must yield to and eventually embrace if they are to go on to find continued meaning in life and living, including the need to remember the deceased loved one and the need for support from others. Short explanations of each mourning need are followed by brief, spiritual passages that, when read slowly and reflectively, help mourners work through their unique thoughts and feelings. Also included in this revised edition are journaling sections for mourners to write out their personal responses to each of the six needs. This replaces 1879651114.
Feel better, grow stronger, and draw closer to the Father Country doctor and author of the acclaimed memoir Appointments with Heaven Reggie Anderson pens hopeful and encouraging reflections on the healing hand of God—even in the darkest of circumstances. Combining inspiring story and powerful Scripture, Reggie reveals the deep and unending love the Father has for his children—broken or whole, healthy or sick. Even when we can’t see it, God is always present in our pain and suffering. Whether in life or after life passes, he is working to bring healing to whatever ails you. With every page of this 90-day devotional, you’ll discover that true healing isn’t limited to the pages of the Bible. God is active and alive, working in our lives to bring us closer to him.
The classic guide for dealing with grief and loss. Daily reflections to find solace in our own lives, and comfort in the connection of sharing these meditations with countless others. After the focus on planning and outpouring of love from family and friends in the immediate aftermath following the loss of a loved one, we are left to enter a new version of our lives where someone important is missing. For days, months, years, the pain of the loss can crash in all at once. It is tempting to push that wave of grief back and soldier on with our new lives, but the loss will never lose its controlling power if we don’t find the courage and love to face it. Meditating on the loss, along with the rush of love that comes with it, gives us a chance to rejoice in the life that was shared, and to look forward in which memories of our loved ones continue to bless us. The short, poignant meditations given here follow the course of the year, but it is not a necessity to follow them chronologically. They will strengthen, inspire, and give comfort for as long as they are needed.
In these personal reflections on his thirty years of clinical work with victims of genocide, torture, and abuse in the United States, Cambodia, Bosnia, and other parts of the world, Richard Mollica describes the surprising capacity of traumatized people to heal themselves. Here is how Neil Boothby, Director of the Program on Forced Migration and Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, describes the book: "Mollica provides a wealth of ethnographic and clinical evidence that suggests the human capacity to heal is innate--that the 'survival instinct' extends beyond the physical to include the psychological as well. He enables us to see how recovery from 'traumatic life events' needs to be viewed primarily as a 'mystery' to be listened to and explored, rather than solely as a 'problem' to be identified and solved. Healing involves a quest for meaning--with all of its emotional, cultural, religious, spiritual and existential attendants--even when bio-chemical reactions are also operative." Healing Invisible Wounds reveals how trauma survivors, through the telling of their stories, teach all of us how to deal with the tragic events of everyday life. Mollica's important discovery that humiliation--an instrument of violence that also leads to anger and despair--can be transformed through his therapeutic project into solace and redemption is a remarkable new contribution to survivors and clinicians. This book reveals how in every society we have to move away from viewing trauma survivors as "broken people" and "outcasts" to seeing them as courageous people actively contributing to larger social goals. When violence occurs, there is damage not only to individuals but to entire societies, and to the world. Through the journey of self-healing that survivors make, they enable the rest of us not only as individuals but as entire communities to recover from injury in a violent world.
In this profoundly theological reflection on illness, healing, and the doctor-patient relationship, pediatrician Margaret Mohrmann bridges the sometimes disparate worlds of medicine and faith, of high technology and ultimate concern. Drawing on her two decades of experience treating children who suffer from disease and dysfunction, Mohrmann movingly reveals the temptations of idolatry that beset our understanding of health and life, the intrinsic connectedness underlying all medical encounters, and the difficulties and riches of using scripture as a moral resource. In clear, accessible language Mohrmann emphasizes the importance of interpreting the lives of the suffering as meaningful and ongoing stories - stories that require all of us to respond in healing ways. Uncovering insights from such diverse sources as the apostle Paul, Alasdair MacIntyre and Flannery O'Connor, she suggests that what is required for a truly human life is not the absence of pain, but the presence of others. Both pastoral and prophetic, Medicine as Ministry is a challenge to rethink the purposes of health care - and to better discern the human condition.
When author and counselor H. Norman Wright’s beloved wife, Joyce, passed away, he grieved the loss of his partner and the life they shared. Even in his state of sorrow, he knew he had to find a way to live without Joyce, to forge a hopeful path, and to move forward in God’s grace and strength. With vulnerability and emotional insight, Norm shares from his deeply personal journey and illuminates the way back to living when someone you love is gone. Readers who have lost their spouse will discover support and guidance as they work through anger, including anger at God, to ease toward God’s peace move away from denial and “what ifs” to move forward allow memories to provide comfort without getting stuck in the past create a healthy new, daily routine to care for themselves turn their new identity and life over to God’s leading and mercy This tender and inspirational book will help any reader who is grieving or who is walking alongside a grieving friend.
