Companions in Suffering


Book Description

Have you ever felt emotionally wrung out from an ongoing trial? Though suffering often leaves us feeling isolated, God invites us into the community of the Trinity and offers us many companions in Scripture. Journey in these pages with Wendy Alsup through her story of suffering, and more importantly, with the God who walks with us in the wilderness.




Hinds Feet on High Places


Book Description

Much-Afraid had been in the service of the Chief Shepherd, whose great flocks were pastured down in the Valley of Humiliation. She lived with her friends and fellow workers Mercy and Peace in a tranquil little white cottage in the village of Much-Trembling. She loved her work and desired intensely to please the Chief Shepherd, but happy as she was in most ways, she was conscious of several things which hindered her in her work and caused her much secret distress and shame. Here is the allegorical tale of Much-Afraid, an every-woman searching for guidance from God to lead her to a higher place.




Companions in the Darkness


Book Description

The church's relationship with depression has been fraught, and we still have a long way to go. Drawing on her own experience with depression, Diana Gruver looks back into church history and finds depression in the lives of some of our most beloved saints, telling their stories in fresh ways and offering practical wisdom both for those in the darkness and those who care for them.




Where Is God in All the Suffering?


Book Description

Suffering and evil affect us all, both at a general level, as we look at a world filled with injustice, natural disasters and poverty, and at a personal level, as we experience grief, pain and unfairness. And how we think about and process the reality of pain is at the heart of why many people reject God. Dr. Amy Orr-Ewing is no stranger to pain and gives a heartfelt yet academically rigorous examination of how different belief systems deal with the problem of pain. She explains the unique answer that is found in Christ and how he can give us hope in the reality of suffering. This empathetic, easy-to-read and powerful evangelistic book is good for both unbelievers and believers alike. It will help those hoping to answer one of life’s biggest questions as well as those who are either suffering personally or comforting others.




The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil


Book Description

This Companion offers a state-of-the-art contribution by providing critical analyses of and creative insights on the problem of evil.




The Morning Sickness Companion


Book Description

It's frustrating and a nuisance--and it can be a major obstacle to experiencing the joy of pregnancy. But morning sickness doesn't always strike in the morning, and for many women it doesn't even strike--it's an ever-present part of their pregnancy, with symptoms ranging from mild nausea and exhaustion to crippling depression and physical illness. We all know the standard suggestions--crackers and tea, Jell-O and ginger ale--but when they don't seem like enough, what can women really do to manage their symptoms and recover the happiness their pregnancy should bring? As debilitating as morning sickness is, we don't hear much about it. But finally, just when it seems as though there's nothing out there, women have somewhere to turn. Elizabeth Kaledin's The Morning Sickness Companion is a book by and for women suffering morning sickness. Morning sickness is a reality of pregnancy--many women are affected--and this book is dedicated to them. It fills a major void in pregnancy literature, providing a brief history of morning sickness, all the latest scientific thinking, research on its emotional toll, and lots of reassuring tips and advice from other women about what they ate, how sick they really were, sources of relief, and how to survive, since the fact is it is nearly inevitable. Engaging, warm, often funny, and always informative, The Morning Sickness Companion offers women who are suffering the wisdom and comfort they really need.




Living Through Pain


Book Description

"In Living Through Pain, Kristin Swenson charts the multifaceted personal and social problems caused by chronic pain. This book also surveys professional efforts to mitigate and manage pain. Because the experience of pain involves all aspects of a person - body, mind, spirit, and community - Swenson consults an ancient resource for wisdom, perspective, and insight. Her close reading of selected psalms from the Hebrew Bible demonstrates that the challenge of living through pain is timeless. Living Through Pain chronicles how these ancient texts offer a vocabulary and grammar for understanding and expressing the contemporary experience of pain. Pain is a universal experience, and this book invites readers to consider more fully what is involved in the process of healing."--BOOK JACKET.




Shunned


Book Description

A Jehovah’s Witness’ Painful but Liberating Realization that She Must Give Up Her Faith “An inherently compelling and candidly revealing memoir . . . an extraordinary, riveting and unreservedly recommended read from first page to last.” —Midwest Book Review Linda Curtis was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and is an unquestioning true believer who has knocked on doors from the time she was nine years old. Like other Witnesses, she has been discouraged from pursuing a career, higher education, or even voting, and her friendships are limited to the Witness community. Then one day, at age thirty-three, she knocks on a door—and a coworker she deeply respects answers the door. To their mutual consternation she launches into her usual spiel, but this time, for the first time ever, the message sounds hollow. In the months that follow, Curtis tries hard to overcome the doubts that spring from that doorstep encounter, knowing they could upend her “safe” existence. But ultimately, unable to reconcile her incredulity, she leaves her religion and divorces her Witness husband—a choice for which she is shunned by the entire community, including all members of her immediate family. Shunned follows Linda as she steps into a world she was taught to fear and discovers what is possible when we stay true to our hearts, even when it means disappointing those we love. “. . . a moving portrait of one woman's life as a Jehovah's Witness and her painful but liberating realization that she must give up her faith.” ―Publishers Weekly “Curtis’s story reads as true to life . . . it will resonate across faith lines.” —Foreword Reviews “A profound, at times fascinating, personal transformation told with meticulous detail.” —Kirkus Reviews “...a riveting story, a page-turner, a magnificent contribution, and a book you will never forget.” —Lynne Twist, global activist and author of The Soul of Money “A wonderful book that is about so much more than the Jehovah’s Witnesses.” —Adair Lara, longtime columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle “...brilliant, respectful, insightful and most of all hopeful.” ―Openly Bookish Readers of Educated and Leaving the Witness will resonate with Linda Curtis’ moving and courageous account of personal transformation. Order your copy today and begin reading this disturbing, heartbreaking, and ultimately inspiring memoir.




Storied Companions


Book Description

A professor, mother, and Buddhist practitioner helps readers discover new ways of facing and experiencing life, death, and impermanence. “With my diagnosis of grade IV brain cancer, I no longer observe the truth of impermanence from a critical, analytical distance. I am crashing into it, or it into me.” Facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, Karen Derris—professor, mother, and Buddhist practitioner—turned to books. By reading ancient Buddhist stories with new questions and a new purpose—finding a way to live with her dying body—she discovers new ways to make them immediate and real. For instance, reading with her terminal prognosis, she becomes one of the four omens (the four signs of impermanence and suffering) the young Siddhartha sees in his excursions from the palace. What would it mean for her to be in the crowd, straining to see the prince with her own sick and impermanent body—to be pushed aside and out of sight by the palace minders, just as our society so often tries to brush aside anything uncomfortable, but to nonetheless be seen by the young bodhisattva? Or reading as a mother, maybe she shares something akin to what Queen Maya may have felt, knowing she was dying, giving her newborn son over to her sister’s care? What will it mean for her own children to be motherless? She follows the knotted threads connecting Milarepa’s angry, vengeful mother to Karen’s own mother, who physically abused her throughout a traumatic childhood. By placing herself into these stories, she turns them from distant and static narratives into companions, and from companions into guides. Storied Companions interweaves Karen’s memoir of her life of trauma and illness with stories from Buddhist literary traditions, sharing with the reader how she found ways to live with the reality that she won’t live as long as she wants and needs to. Honest, powerful, and insightful, Storied Companions itself becomes an invaluable companion, guiding the reader to discover new ways of facing and experiencing life, death, and impermanence.




A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages


Book Description

The biblical book of Job is a timeless text that relates a story of intense human suffering, abandonment, and eventual redemption. It is a tale of profound theological, philosophical, and existential significance that has captured the imaginations of auditors, exegetes, artists, religious leaders, poets, preachers, and teachers throughout the centuries. This original volume provides an introduction to the wide range of interpretations and representations of Job—both the scriptural book and its righteous protagonist—produced in the medieval Christian West. The essays gathered here treat not only exegetical and theological works such as Gregory’s Moralia and the literal commentaries of Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Lyra, but also poetry and works of art that have Job as their subject.