And Life Comes Back by Tricia Lott Williford

What if you thought your husband had the flu and you slept on the couch and then when you went up to check on him, he died?  In your arms? 

And then what if you had to be a mama to your children and miss your husband and figure out how to grieve?

I sat down with this book and didn't even stop reading until past midnight and past page one hundred; Tricia didn't wait to write her story until all the loose ends were tied up and her grief was wrapped into a neat package.  It's raw and real and stunningly honest. 

It would have been easy to gloss over some of the odd and frustrating and funny things about grief, but the author doesn't, sharing openly the difficulty of going to church, coping with her suddenly non-existent love life, her choice to get a tattoo, marking the loss on her skin,  a weird grief advocate lady who talked about pets dying when their owners die.  Anyone who has walked through loss knows all of these realities and it was refreshing to hear someone put words to the whole picture, not only just the sad and spiritual parts.

And Life Comes Back is a perfect title: life can come back, even after the deepest tragedies.  Life returning doesn't mean everything is fixed, but it does mean that laughter returns and joy and breathing without breaking down.

{I recieved this book for free from Blogging for Books.  I was not required to write a positive review.}

The Question That Never Goes Away by Philip Yancey

Why?

It is a question that cries out for an answer when we can't wrap our minds around the Hand of God allowing pain. 

Yancey writes with clarity and honesty, never deviating from the strong belief that God is Love, even in the darkest moments: Sarajevo, tsunamis, twenty little kindergarteners whose lives are snuffed out at Christmastime. Is God there? Does He care? Yancey examines these questions from a variety of religions and world views, including atheism, concluding logically that only Christianity provides hope and redemption for the heartache and pain of humanity. 

Just 154 pages, this is an excellent book to give someone who has experienced great loss.  Yancey's crisp, sweeping, journalistic style of writing includes thoughts from some of my favorite writers on the subject of pain: C.S. Lewis, Nouwen, Jerry Sittser.  Because of Yancey's extensive research, many short quotes from other sources are shared. Two rather confusing ones made me pause though: one, an evolutionary view of how humans show compassion, and the other referring to "the God of 14 billion years since the beginning of the universe." Elsewhere the author affirms his own views on our Creator God, but the lack of clarification would make me hesitate a bit before I gave the book to an unbeliever. 

Having experienced the loss of a child, I know that some of the greatest healing came to my heart from reading books people gave to me.  I have a shelf dedicated to grief and loss and it's kind of a revolving library because I give away the best ones to others who would benefit. The Question That Never Goes Away is already headed to a friend of mine, so I will have to order my own copy to restock my bookshelf. 

This hopeful, clear, healing little book validates pain while pointing to our Creator Who sent His Son to die so that pain and sin wouldn't define humanity forever.

Disclosure: I received this book for free through the blogger review program, BookSneeze.  I was not required to write a positive review.