An inspirational and practical handbook that points the way to joyous...

Hard times come for all in life, with no real explanation. When we walk through suffering, it has the potential to devastate and destroy, or to be the gateway to gratitude and joy. Elisabeth Elliot was no stranger to suffering. Her first husband, Jim, was murdered by the Waoroni people in Ecuador moments after he arrived in hopes of sharing the gospel. Her second husband was lost to cancer. Yet, it was in her deepest suffering that she learned the deepest lessons about God. Why doesn’t God do something about suffering? He has, He did, He is, and He will. Suffering and love are inexplicably linked, as God’s love for His people is evidenced in His sending Jesus to carry our sins, griefs, and sufferings on the cross, sacrificially taking what was not His on Himself so that we would not be required to carry it. He has walked the ultimate path of suffering, and He has won victory on our behalf. This truth led Elisabeth to say, “Whatever is in the cup that God is offering to me, whether it be pain and sorrow and suffering and grief along with the many more joys, I’m willing to take it because I trust Him.” Because suffering is never for nothing.

The astonishing, Job-like story of how an existence filled with loss, suffering, questioning, and anger became a life filled with shocking and incomprehensible peace and joy. Vaneetha Risner contracted polio as an infant, was misdiagnosed, and lived with widespread paralysis. She lived in and out of the hospital for ten years and, after each stay, would return to a life filled with bullying. When she became a Christian, though, she thought things would get easier, and they did: carefree college days, a dream job in Boston, and an MBA from Stanford where she met and married a classmate. But life unraveled. Again. She had four miscarriages. Her son died because of a doctor's mistake. And Vaneetha was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, meaning she would likely become a quadriplegic. And then her husband betrayed her and moved out, leaving her to raise two adolescent daughters alone. This was not the abundant life she thought God had promised her. But, as Vaneetha discovered, everything she experienced was designed to draw her closer to Christ as she discovered "that intimacy with God in suffering can be breathtakingly beautiful."

Take charge of your health, happiness, and inner peace with this authoritative guide on treating yourself with kindness, acceptance, and compassion In this life-changing book, Blake Bauer explains why depression, addiction, physical illness, unfulfilling work, and relationship problems are caused by years of hiding your true emotions, denying your life purpose, and living in fear. Having already helped thousands of people find lasting solutions that conventional medicine, psychiatry, or religion couldn't offer, You Were Not Born to Suffer will show you how to free yourself from these destructive thoughts, habits, and situations that keep you from being happy and well. In simple practical steps you'll learn how to slow down and create a healthier relationship to yourself that is based on acceptance, kindness, honesty, and self-worth. You'll also find out how to transform the stress, anxiety, and insecurity that result from constantly trying to please others into lasting confidence, self-respect, and inner peace. Whether it's negative thinking, financial worry, loneliness, guilt, or self-doubt that's holding you back, Blake Bauer's words will move you to take better care of yourself, heal old pain, and courageously move forward. If you're ready to enjoy your life, feel passionate about your work, and create fulfilling relationships, this book will support you to live authentically, love wholeheartedly, and finally value yourself enough to put everyday health and happiness at the center of your life.

On March 2, 1994, the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (a division of the Public Health Service) made headlines by releasing new cancer pain management guidelines. That report revealed that pain is frequently undertreated, and that relief is not only possible for most patients, but actually aids in recovery. For many cancer victims, the agency's guidelines offered new hope; for Dr. Richard B. Patt and coauthor Susan S. Lang, it was a resounding vindication of the findings they set forth in You Don't Have to Suffer. Written by one of the country's leading cancer pain experts and science writer Lang, You Don't Have to Suffer provides an invaluable, no-nonsense handbook for anyone with cancer, for anyone caring for a loved one with cancer, and for the doctors and nurses who treat these patients. The authors first illuminate the reasons why patients are so often undermedicated, including unfounded fears of addiction, patients thinking they need to tough it out, time-consuming paperwork for doctors who prescribe narcotics, and laws that fail to distinguish between drug abuse and the legitimate employment of narcotics. In a careful argument now taken up by the AHCPR's guidelines, Lang and Patt demonstrate that properly medicated patients are better able to resume active lives and marshall strength to fight their disease--while those in chronic pain not only suffer, but also may jeopardize their potential for recovery. You Don't Have to Suffer explores all the pain-relieving options available in the modern medical arsenal--from drugs and high-tech medical procedures to psychological and cognitive techniques and home nursing tips to make a patient more comfortable. Detailed chapters discuss the medications that can fight cancer pain or relieve the undesirable side effects of chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, and other cancer treatments; anaesthetic and neurosurgical options for pain that has not responded well to simpler techniques; ways to prevent or relieve constipation, nausea, drowsiness, and other complaints of cancer patients; and mind/body techniques and other ways of coping with depression and various psychological symptoms that contribute to the relief of suffering. Pulling together a wealth of long-needed information on the latest medical advances, You Don't Have To Suffer is a volume for the growing numbers of patients, family members, and health-care professionals who are determined to relieve needless cancer pain.

This unusual self-help book about surviving grief offers the reader comfort and inspiration. Each of us will face some loss, sorrow and disappointment in our lives, and The Courage to Grieve provides the specific help we need to enable us to face our grief fully and to recover and grow from the experience. Although the book emphasizes the response to the death of a loved one, The Courage to Grieve can help with every kind of loss and grief. Judy Tatelbaum gives us a fresh look at understanding grief, showing us that grief is a natural, inevitable human experience, including all the unexpected, intense and uncomfortable emotions like sorrow, guilt, loneliness, resentment, confusion, or even the temporary loss of the will to live. The emphasis is to clarify and offer help, and the tone is spiritual, optimistic, creative and easy to understand. Judy Tatelbaum provides excellent advice on how to help oneself and others get through the immediate experience of death and the grief that follows, as well as how to understand the special grief of children. Particularly useful are the techniques for completing or "finishing" grief--counteracting the popular misconception that grief never ends. The Courage to Grieve shows us how to live life with the ultimate courage: not fearing death. This book is about so much more than death and grieving it is about life and joy and growth.

World Magazine Book of the Year Creative Quarterly Professional Graphic Design Runner-Up Christianity Today's Book of the Year Winner ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award "This book will make no attempt to defend God. . . . If you are looking for a book that boasts triumphantly of conquest over a great enemy, or gives a detached philosophical analysis that neatly solves an absorbing problem, this isn't it." Too often the Christian attitude toward suffering is characterized by a detached academic appeal to God's sovereignty, as if suffering were a game or a math problem. Or maybe we expect that since God is good, everything will just work out all right somehow. But where then is honest lament? Aren't we shortchanging believers of the riches of the Christian teaching about suffering? In Embodied Hope Kelly Kapic invites us to consider the example of our Lord Jesus. Only because Jesus has taken on our embodied existence, suffered alongside us, died, and been raised again can we find any hope from the depths of our own dark valleys of pain. As we look to Jesus, we are invited to participate not only in his sufferings, but also in the church, which calls us out of isolation and into the encouragement and consolation of the communal life of Christ. Drawing on his own family's experience with prolonged physical pain, Kapic reshapes our understanding of suffering into the image of Jesus, and brings us to a renewed understanding of—and participation in—our embodied hope.