Spiritual Grief

We've lost the practice of lament. Most people don't know how to process personal or communal mourning and instead struggle to honor their tears, vulnerability, and the full weight of these disillusioning times. But tending our grief might be exactly what we need to reimagine a way forward. Tracing her difficult experiences of a catastrophic home fire, a threat to her child's well-being, and other devastating losses and upheavals, Terra McDaniel offers a clear framework for expressing heartache and burdens.

Frederick Buechner has grappled with the nature of pain, grief, and grace ever since his father committed suicide when Buechner was a young boy. He continued that search as a father when his daughter struggled with anorexia. In this essential collection of essays, including one never before published, Frederick Buechner finds that the God who might seem so silent is ever near. He writes about what it means to be a steward of our pain, and about this grace from God that seems arbitrary and yet draws us to his holiness and care.

Grief is a personal journey, never the same for any two people and as unique as your life and your relationships. Although loss is an inevitable part of life, how you approach this fact can make the difference between meaningless pain and the manifestation of understanding and wisdom. This audio book shares a mindful approach to dealing with grief that can help you make that difference.

More than a decade ago, Jerry Sittser prayed for the protection of his family, yet three of his loved ones - his daughter, his wife, and his mother - died in an automobile accident. What went wrong? When God Doesn't Answer Your Prayer takes an honest and probing look at the problem of unanswered prayer. In doing so, it draws us ever deeper into a relationship with the God who is the end of all our prayers, the object of our faith, and the one who fulfills our deepest longings.

Through a panoramic overview of what the Bible says about suffering, the authors make clear who God is, why he permits so much heartache and pain, and how it is we can trust him. With both a practical edge and heartfelt warmth, When God Weeps offers dependence on his love and mercy in spite of our doubts, fears, longings, and questions.

In Courageously Expecting, author Jenny Albers meets you in this difficult season as someone who has also experienced the worst and cautiously hoped for the best. She invites you on a thirty-day journey through the complicated and often contradictory emotions that accompany pregnancy after a loss.

Dallas Willard spent his life making eternal living concrete for his friends. After his unexpected passing in 2013, the kaleidoscope of memories and the diversity of the lives he had touched could not be confined to one or even two memorial services but three. It is this wide breadth of impact that inspired friends, family, colleagues, students, and leaders of the church to gather their reflections on this celebrated yet humble theologian and philosopher.

Christians today are often not prepared to suffer well and have a short-sighted view of pain and trials. Ken Boa shows how God uses suffering to shape his children for eternity and to grow them in Christlike character. The book of 1 Peter tells us suffering is both a guarantee and comparatively brief; we shouldn't be surprised when it comes to us. The nature of our affliction is not as important as our response to it. God is at work through our hardships and wants to use them to prepare us for eternal life. Suffering can make us bitter or better. Rediscover living hope, present joy, and a glorious future.

When Colin Campbell’s two teenage children were killed by a drunk driver, Campbell was thrown headlong into a grief so deep he felt he might lose his mind. He found much of the common wisdom about coping with loss—including the ideas that grieving is a private and mysterious process and that the pain is so great that “there are no words”—to be unhelpful. Drawing on what he learned from his own journey, Campbell offers an alternative path for processing pain that is active and vocal and truly honors loved ones lost.

Every person who lives long enough will eventually encounter circumstances that are difficult to explain theologically. From years of counselling experience, Dr. James Dobson offers assurance of God's constant care, even when human suffering is beyond our comprehension.

Amanda Held Opelt search for a way to process her grief led her to seek wisdom about how other people have made it through, and she found that generations past embraced rituals that served as vessels for pain and aided in the process of grieving and healing. Today, many of these traditions have been lost as religious practice declines, cultures amalgamate, death is sanitized, and pain is averted. In this raw and authentic memoir of bereavement, Opelt explores the history of human grief practices and how previous generations have journeyed through periods of suffering.

Seasons of grief, pain, and loss of control are inevitable. Despite our best efforts and steadfast faith, reality rarely matches our expectations. In an unpredictable and broken world, how do we cling to a foundation that provides purpose for today and hope for the future? In their new book, Beyond Our Control, Michael and Lauren McAfee show us how trusting God brings greater contentment than the illusion of control. With deep and abiding faith, the McAfees draw on their experiences with adoption, infertility, illness, and loss to help readers navigate unexpected circumstances.

A Dream So Big is the story of Steve Peifer, a corporate manager who once oversaw 9,000 computer software consultants, who today helps provide daily lunches for over 20,000 Kenyan school children in 35 national public schools, and maintains solar-powered computer labs at 20 rural African schools.

The son of a preacher, 18-year-old Tim Timberlake learned to appreciate the extraordinary value and gift of each minute of every day the hard way through the tragic and sudden loss of his father. Tim began a journey to not just get through each day, but to exhaust every opportunity of potential of that day, moment by moment, fulfilling his God-given purpose. Now a pastor himself, Tim inspires others to approach each day in a way that they live out their own God-given purposes and passions.

Mattie Jackson draws on her experience of grieving the sudden death of her young husband to extend to you a safe and guided place to journey from devastating loss toward comfort and healing. Whether your sorrow is recent, or you’re still feeling the ache of a loved one’s absence, or you're lamenting a difficult situation, this book is an honest companion, validation for the hard days, and a sustaining guide to help soften the psychological stages of grief.

When the oldest of Kate Braestrup's four children was 10 years old, her husband, a Maine state trooper, was killed in a car accident. Stunned and grieving, she decided to pursue her husband's dream of becoming a Unitarian minister. She eventually began working with the Maine Game Warden Service, which conducts the state's search-and-rescue operations when people go missing in the wilderness.

Join New York Times best-selling author Shauna Niequist as she invites you to experience the precious gifts and wisdom that only come the hard way - through change, loss, and transition. In this collection of poignant essays, Shauna reflects on her own journey of making peace with change, the nuanced mix of excitement and heartbreak that comes with it, and the practices that offer us strength and hope along the way. A tribute to life at the edges, Bittersweet is a love letter to the bittersweet and sacred work that change does in us all.

Two years after Marilyn loses her fiancé to cancer, she becomes a Christian and marries Henry, joining him in a worldwide ministry that leaves little time for family or personal reflection. When her old grief resurfaces, she’s shocked by the tsunami that rips through their lives. Intensive counselling fails to bring healing, and when Henry writes a public letter that decimates their churches and spins them out of fellowship—and lifelong employment—she faces an emotional and spiritual reckoning that challenges her to the core.

Life can be hard. Although there are moments of beauty and goodness, more often than not, life is marked by fear, struggle, disappointment, and loss. And we don't know what to do with it. We've tried to find hope and security in various people and places—but each has proved unworthy of our trust. We need more. Something—or Someone—who won't fail us when our world falls apart. In this book, beloved author and Bible teacher Michele Cushatt presents a better way.

For Christians, eternity with Jesus is an exciting promise that many long to see fulfilled. But many wonder what is so wonderful about heaven. In a 50-day devotional journey, Randy Alcorn reveals Biblical teachings on what life will be like in heaven. Throughout this journey, the listener will learn and meditate upon the promises, rewards and expectations, as found in scripture, that a believer in Christ will enjoy for all eternity.