Journey On: Through This Shadowed Valley


Book Description

We all have a valley to walk in our lifetime, yet what if that shadowed valley never ends? What do we do when our illness steals so much from us? Journey On: Through This Shadowed Valley is my journal, my journey. It chronicles my ups and downs, my doubts, my praises, and my dreams. I'm giving you an inside look at being newly diagnosed with a chronic condition and chronic pain. It's my hope that you find you aren't alone in the fight as you read my words and the words of six other people who have learned to live with their chronic conditions. Our illness may be a thief, but we can still live life to its fullest! I invite you to travel with me in Journey On: Through This Shadowed Valley. Together we thrive! “The blunt honesty that Daphne reveals as she struggles with fibromyalgia provides hope to those who deal with lifelong chronic pain. Her relationship with Jesus during the worst of times shows through our weakness Jesus shows his strength. If we lay our sorrows before Christ He will lift them from our shoulders just as He promised when He said “My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). Daphne’s journey gives hope to those who believe they have no hope and that hope is found in Jesus.” Ann Allen, author of Out of Darkness “Journey On: Through This Shadowed Valley by Daphne Self paints a picture of chronic illness. The book’s daily descriptions of pain and loss are woven into the author’s strong faith, which sees her through the valleys of her disease. The book will help others who have chronic illnesses feel less alone as it educates all to the depth of suffering and daily struggles of those with chronic diseases.” Gail Pallotta, a Reader’s Favorite Award Winner and TopShelf 2020 Nominee “Daphne Self’s Journey On: Through This Shadowed Valley is an illuminating account of the daily struggles faced by fibromyalgia and chronic pain patients. The author finds consolation in her Christian faith, but this is a must-read for anyone with FMS who feels lost, confused and alone; or for their family members or friends. Helpful references are included where to seek more information. Fibromyalgia is a genuine disease, which recent evidence is confirming, and this “real and raw” book reveals its devastating effects on the sufferer.” Ronda L. Wells, MD




Yet Will I Praise Him: Living and Parenting with a Chronic Illness


Book Description

Motherhood can often feel overwhelming and isolating, but for moms with a chronic illness, those feelings are often intensified. When your life is a constant battle with pain, fatigue, and isolation, it's easy to lose sight of any joy in your life. Wife and mother Hannah Wingert knows this all too well. After finally being diagnosed with a chronic illness following the birth of her fourth child, Hannah has had to come to terms with her diagnosis and to learn to be a wife and mother in the midst of her invisible illness. In her inspirational book, Yet Will I Praise Him, Hannah opens up candidly about her own struggles of living and parenting with a chronic illness. She will help you understand: -how to use your chronic illness to grow in your faith, -how to balance your marriage and parenting, and -how to live each day with hope so you can not only survive the challenges you face, but also thrive. Hannah covers everything from the tough questions such as "Why doesn't God heal me?" to "Why doesn't my husband 'get it?'" She also provides savvy advice and practical tips she's learned along her journey. Though Yet Will I Praise Him is written by a mom for moms, it also covers information such as how the five stages of grief work when you have a chronic illness and what not to say to a parent with a chronic illness, making it beneficial for anyone who has a loved one who lives with a chronic illness.




Valley of Shadows and Dreams


Book Description

A documentary look at the critical problems of the most productive farmland in America and the people who work on it by an award-winning team. With an introduction by Thomas Steinbeck .




Yea Though I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death


Book Description

Yea though I Walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death had to be written. It is a heart-wrenching account of a womans road through her own personal anguish and back, one that could be written only by the person who experienced it. It describes how she lived through the death of her infant daughter, a fire that totally destroyed her home and its contents, the suicide of her 21-year-old son, the killing of her 25-year-old son, the subsequent trauma, called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that followed, and her return to stability. Such a listing doesnt capture Chriss journey. Though not a professional writer, she has allowed us to enter her world, with all of its twists and turns, moments of sadness and despair, and finally, the peace that comes from emerging on the other side. She has a guileless honesty that wont let you go. No doubt thousands of people have shared some of Chriss experiences few, if any, to her degreebut fewer still have her ability to capture that experience in a way that makes her experiences their own. Kevin Burne, Ph.D.




Word in the Wilderness


Book Description

For every day from Shrove Tuesday to Easter Day, the bestselling poet Malcolm Guite chooses a favourite poem from across the Christian spiritual and English literary traditions and offers incisive reflections on it. A scholar of poetry and a renowned poet himself, his knowledge is deep and wide and he offers readers a soul-food feast for Lent.




Always Coming Home


Book Description

An "ethnographic" novel that portrays life in California's Napa Valley as it might be a very long time from now, imagined not as a high tech future but as a time of people once again living close to the land.




Sifted


Book Description

The Death of a child. Bearing the unbearable. A journey of faith. The complex questions, experiences, and emotions that accompany grief are painfully isolating. Seize this rare opportunity to intimately journey alongside a grieving mother through the first seven years of grief. Candidly confront many painful yet common struggles of grief, and reconcile shattering loss with faith in God June 8, 2017, Scott and Karen Harmening's seventeen-year-old daughter, Sarah, was killed in a tragic church bus crash outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Scott was driving behind the bus and watched helplessly as it crossed into the adjacent lane striking another vehicle, sharply overcorrected, and then flipped across the interstate. After crawling through the wreckage to get to Sarah, he frantically called Karen to tell her to pray for Sarah who was pinned beneath the wreckage. Karen and their remaining daughters prayed together and hurriedly began the three-and-a-half hour drive from Huntsville, Alabama, to Scott and Sarah; only to learn upon their arrival that Sarah had died hours before. Karen, a Christian writer and blogger, immediately began writing to process the excruciating questions, experiences, and emotions that accompany the death of a child; Sifted is the collected work of seven years of writings. With raw honesty, explore the depths of the valley of the shadow of death with her to reconcile shattering loss with faith in God. Witness the unexpectedly sweet mingling of sorrow with hope and peace. And discover, deep in the shadowed valley, a costly joy rendered by sorrow so pure and precious that it is "inexpressible and full of glory." Highlights: -One hundred entries written over a span of seven years -Each entry is a transparent account of wrestling through a specific question, experience, or struggle related to grief -Entries may be read in chronological order or topically by using the included topical index -If you are grieving-read and be encouraged you are not alone -If you love someone who is grieving-read to better understand suffering and grief -If you love stories of faith triumphing in adversity-read and be blessed Explore topics such as: -Understanding Grief -Hard Questions Like "What If?" and "Why?" -Surviving the Many Hard Days and Dates -Finding Hope -Finding Joy -Loneliness and Abandonment -Spiritual Warfare -Will It Ever Get Better?




The Weight of a Piano


Book Description

USA TODAY BESTSELLER In 1962, in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed what will become the love of her life: a Blüthner piano, on which she discovers an enrichening passion for music. Yet after she marries, her husband insists the family emigrate to America—and loses her piano in the process. In 2012, in Bakersfield, California, twenty-six-year-old Clara Lundy is burdened by the last gift her father gave her before he and her mother died in a terrible house fire: a Blüthner upright she has never learned to play. Now a talented and independent auto mechanic, Clara’s career is put on hold when she breaks her hand trying to move the piano, and in sudden frustration she decides to sell it. Only in discovering the identity of the buyer—and the secret history of her piano—will Clara be set free to live the life of her choosing.




Collected Short Stories


Book Description

When Aldous Huxley's Brave New World first appeared in 1932, it presented in terms of purest fantasy a society bent on self-destruction. Few of its outraged critics anticipated the onset of another world war with its Holocaust and atomic ruin. In 1948, seeing that the probable shape of his anti-utopia had been altered inevitably by the facts of history, Huxley wrote Ape and Essence. In this savage novel, using the form of a film scenario, he transports us to the year 2108. The setting is Los Angeles where a "rediscovery expedition" from New Zealand is trying to make sense of what is left. From chief botanist Alfred Poole we learn, to our dismay, about the twenty-second-century way of life. "It was inevitable that Mr. Huxley should have written this book: one could almost have seen it since Hiroshima is the necessary sequel to Brave New World."—Alfred Kazin. "The book has a certain awesome impressiveness; its sheer intractable bitterness cannot but affect the reader."—Time.




Journey Into the Heart of God


Book Description

Using the riches of traditional liturgical texts and classic hymns, together with the role of the natural world, this book examines the living reality of the liturgical year.