Spiritual Grief

New York Times best-selling author Jeff Benedict has seen both good and bad in his career as a journalist. Some of the best are the extraordinary people he has met who have made deliberate choices to live happier lives despite the extreme hardship that each of them have faced. Although life will knock us down from time to time, this book is an important reminder that we all can make a choice to get back up, brush ourselves off, and keep pressing forward.

When we are lost in the storms of grief, only God can pierce the darkness. How can a broken, bewildered woman who lost her sister, a brilliant PhD nurse, to suicide, her youngest son to respiratory distress caused by an accidental drug-alcohol interaction, on the night of her brother-in-law's memorial service, her sister-in-law to cancer, four years to the day after her son's death, want to get out of bed and live - out loud and in color? Simple. God revealed Himself to her and breathed life back into every nook and cranny of her very being.

The apostle Peter described faith as "much more precious than gold that perishes". As gold passes through purifying fire, so Peter says a man's faith must be tried in order that it "might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:7). While we address the crises in our lives that try our faith, we rarely praise God the way Job did, and we rarely submit ourselves to the purifying fire as Peter suggests.