A Grace Disguised

In helping clean up the church basement, I found this book and took it home for a while.  You can read more about it here. And a cheaper version plus reviews here.

The title intrigued me.  This is one of the things I've thought throughout this loss.  The soul grows.  Not just maybe in maturity or something noble.  That's probably possible.  But in size.  It has expanded in size.  It can hold so much more pain and so much more joy, empathy, etc.  Expanded like a balloon.  (So much for people who think there is no soul.) 

This is what the jacket says:

Sooner or later all people suffer loss, in little doses or big ones, suddenly or over time, privately or in public settings.  Loss is as much a part of normal life as birth, for as surely as we are born into this world we suffer loss before we leave it.  This book shows how it is possible to live in and be enlarged by loss, even as we continue to experience it.

The experience of loss does not have to be the defining moment of our lives.  Instead, the defining moment can be our response to the loss.  It is not so much as what happens to us that matters so much as what happens in us.

LOSS.  It's a word that many of us fear and few of us can evade.  It stalked Gerald Sittser one night and struck with full fury on a lonely road in Idaho.  In an instant, a tragic accident claimed three generations of his family:  his mother, his wife, and his young daughter.

But this is not a book about one man's sorrow.  Rather it is a moving on the losses we all suffer and the grace that can transform us.

A Grace Disguised plumbs the depth of our sorrows, whether due to illness, divorce, or the loss of someone we love.  The circumstances are not important;  what we do with those circumstances is.  In coming to the end of ourselves, we can come to the beginning of a new life--one marked by spiritual depth, joy, compassion, and a deeper appreciation of simple blessings.

If your soul aches, you may be on a journey that will stretch your faith, your understanding of the meaning of life, and your knowledge of God.  If you let it, your sorrow will increase your capacity to live well, to love life, and to experience joy, not after the darkness but even in the midst of it.