What’s In The Stack?

August 27, 2016 By Michelle Van Loon

FullSizeRender (1) Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. — Mark Twain

Even as I’ve been in book release mode these last weeks, excited to launch my own book into the world, I’ve been savoring the words of others. During the last few weeks, I’ve been spending time with the books pictured at right, as well as a couple of more works of fiction not in the shot. Here’s a quick review of each:

Saints: A Year in Faith and Art by Rosa Giorgi (Abrams 2005) – This gorgeous volume offers a thumbnail sketch of a Catholic saint whose life is commemorated on each day of the year, along with a beautiful reproduction of a piece of artwork featuring the saint. The images and stories are part history lesson and part school of discipleship. Though these are all human beings, the best of what their lives are have put a beautifully-human face on some of whom might be in that great cloud of witnesses to which Hebrews 12:1 refers.

Soul Bare: Stories of Redemption, edited by Cara Sexton (IVP 2016) – This book of essays penned by 31 thoughtful authors who remind us that victory in the Christian life relies more on telling the truth than it does about buffing up a false image of success. These essays tackle abuse, disability, mental illness, loss, shame, and more in consistently relatable and inviting writing. The diverse voices blend together in this volume to create beautiful harmony that reminds readers that the true, authentic you is the one God knows, loves, and is in the process of redeeming.

Being Well When We’re Ill: Wholeness and Hope In Spite Of Infirmity by Marva Dawn (Augsburg Fortress 2008) – I really don’t want to be reading a book like this (who does?), but as I’ve dealt with ongoing pain and expensive medical testing en route to beginning intrusive treatment I’ll need for the rest of my life, I found myself in search of platitude-free wisdom from someone who has been there. Theologian Marva Dawn lives “there”, and has penned a series of helpful reflections for those dealing with chronic, life-altering illness. Topics include side effects, depression, isolation, meaninglessness, loss of certainty, and dying. Her experience adds both authority and compassion to her wise words.

Attributes of God: A Journey Into The Father’s Heart (Vol. 1) and Attributes of God: Deeper Into The Father’s Heart (Vol. 2) by A.W. Tozer, study guide by David Fessenden (Moody/Wingspread, 2007 and 2015, respectively) – The Tuesday morning Bible study I attend will be using these books as a resource this fall as we study the attributes of God. Tozer’s gift of preaching and uncompromising affection for the Word of God have kept his words in print for a couple of generations after his death in 1963. These books were originally simply reprints of his messages, but a recent repackaging includes a very helpful study guide that helps readers dig deeper into the Scriptures to which Tozer referred. I’m looking forward to spending time this fall simply contemplating the nature of God as I study and learn with this group.

The Complete Jewish Study Bible: Illuminating The Jewishness of God’s Word (Hendrickson, 2016) – I received a review copy of this gorgeous volume from the publisher, but the cost I paid does not reflect my opinion about this volume. The translation (CJB) has been in circulation for a number of years. It contains both Old and New Testaments, rendered in a way that reflects the Jewishness of the entire canon of Scripture. What is new here is the study materials with which it is now packaged: study notes, articles, introductions to each book, explanations about Hebrew words and concepts, listing of readings for Shabbat and holy days, and much, much more. The contributors read like a who’s who of scholars from the mainstream and Messianic Jewish community. Though I am not a fan of most study Bibles – mostly because I find myself always-tempted to go to the notes and references without contemplating the text for myself – this particular study Bible is an exception to my own rule. I believe this would be a great addition to the library of anyone interested in doing some serious study that will help them understand more about the Jewishness of the Bible and their faith.

Besides the books in the stack, I also had the opportunity to read a couple of works of fiction this summer. I’m not a big fiction reader, but there are some times when a work of fiction is just what the doctor ordered, such as during plane trips and long, lazy afternoons in lawn chairs:

Two Steps Forward: A Story Of Persevering in Hope by Sharon Garlough Brown (IVP 2015) – I read and enjoyed Brown’s first book in the series, Sensible Shoes, and was not disappointed by its sequel. She was able to write a compelling, realistic story about the lives of four women who have recognized God’s invitation to them as they’ve each found themselves at a crossroads while at the same time highlighting various spiritual disciplines that contain his invitation to each one of us. In Brown’s capable hands, this seemingly-impossible hybrid of novel and introductory handbook, becomes not only possible, but a rich, grounded read. I’m looking forward to book number three in the series, slated for release later this year.

Evensong by Gail Godwin (Ballatine 2000) – An Anglican minister in a North Carolina mountain town? Is it Father Tim, from Jan Karon’s beloved Mitford series? (No, Father Tim is Episcopal, for one thing.) Author Gail Godwin situates her protagonist, rector Margaret Bonner, in the same general vicinity and contemporary time frame as Karon, but Godwin’s characters are darker and more complex than those in Karon’s world. I’ve loved Karon’s books, but about two chapters in to Evensong, I laid the comparisons aside and let Godwin’s frank writing about the struggle to find faith in the midst of personal, relational, and community brokenness lead me into Bonner’s world.

What’s in your stack? What are you reading right now?

Read, Reading, Gonna Read

April 25, 2016 By Michelle Van Loon

I love a long conversation over coffee with a friend. Before I was old enough to drink coffee, books were my favorite conversation partners and most trusted friends. They still hold a prime spot in my heart. The not-so-good ones give me food for thought, if only to remind me to do something different in my own writing. Good books educate, provoke, or inspire. Great ones do all three.

The long weeks of illness combined with the shut-in-life that is late winter in Chicago gave me plenty of reading time. Plus, three writing friends all launched books into this world. And I came home from the Festival of Faith and Writing (FFW) with an armload of new reads. I’m sharing my current “just read, currently reading, plan to read” list below.

And I love to know what others are reading or have in their “to read” stack (because I am always looking for new friends). Please feel free to share your current list(s) in the comments section below!

A Continual Feast by Evelyn Birge Vitz (Harper & Row, 1985) – Reading

This lovely volume is part cookbook, part church history, and part invitation to living your liturgy at your own dining table in the company of family and friends. This book offers recipes from across Europe to highlight and celebrate the Christian year, and in the process, help us experience the story in new ways. (HT Kelli Trujillo)

The Grammar of God: A Journey Into The Words and Worlds Of The Bible by Aviya Kushner (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) – Read

I loved this book so much I ordered a copy as soon as I finished reading it to gift to a friend who teaches Hebrew. I wish I could give about 20 more copies away to Bible teachers and students I know. I think they’d enjoy the volume as much as I did. Kushner invites readers into the riches of biblical Hebrew and the art of translation. This could be deadly boring subject matter, but Kushner’s interweaving of her own story and her depth of engagement with the richness of the living language of Scripture transformed the rich information into lively, compelling prose. (Thank you for this one, Don Pape!)

guide The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality For Real Life by James Martin, S.J. (HarperOne, 2012) – Reading

Martin is the editor of the magazine America and a winsome writer who translates Ignatian spiritual practice into this user-friendly, accessible and readable volume. “Readable” might be the wrong word, as this book begs to be re-read more than once. His honesty and humor combine with wisdom that’s emerged from years of practice. I’m nearly done with this book, and don’t plan to shelve or box it any time soon. It’s the kind of volume I’ll reference again and again.

Why Is There A Menorah On The Altar? The Jewish Roots Of Christian Worship by Meredith Gould, Ph.D. (Seabury, 2009) – Plan To Read

I was tickled to meet Meredith “in real life” at the FFW earlier this month. We somehow connected on Twitter a few years ago (which is a lifetime in internet years), and discovered we shared both Jewish heritage, a connection to Jesus, and a penchant for asking questions. I’m looking forward to reading her insights on a subject near and dear to my own heart!

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Prince Crossing (The Blackberry Chronicles, Book 3) by Johannah Reardon (Amazon Digital, 2011) – Read

I don’t read much fiction, but a few weeks ago when I was very sick, I couldn’t take one more moment of zombie TV watching. This sweet story was a perfect, comforting escape from my own circumstances. Though it was the third book in a series, I didn’t have any trouble orienting myself to the characters or setting, and I enjoyed Reardon’s take on the story of a city girl who had to figure out how to live and thrive as a pastor’s wife in an insular small town.

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Thumbprint in the Clay: Divine Marks of Beauty, Order and Grace by Luci Shaw (InterVarsity Press, 2016) – Plan To Read

I attended a gathering at FFW sponsored by The Well, Intervarsity’s outreach to women in grad school and beyond. When they gifted each of us in attendance with a book by the shimmering Luci Shaw, I knew I was among some of my people. Shaw’s poetic voice has been used by God through the years to help me see beyond what is before me, and and I have every reason to believe this book holds some lovely new vistas for me in its words.

shoes Sensible Shoes: A Story About The Spiritual Journey by Sharon Garlough Brown (InterVarsity Press, 2013) – Plan To Read

Several unconnected people I respect have commended this book about spiritual formation to me. I bought it at FFW, and look forward to reading it – and perhaps the next book in her series, entitled Two Steps Forward: A Story of Persevering In Hope.

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Praying Together: The Priority and Privilege of Prayer In Our Homes, Communities and Churches by Megan Hill (Crossway, 2016) – Plan To Read

I’ve gotten to know Megan as she’s a fellow contributor to the Christianity Today Her.meneutics blog, and have been deeply impressed by her wisdom and her deep commitment to prayer. She has lived what she advocates in this important book – prayer is not only a solo spiritual discipline, but has a rich (and largely untapped) corporate dimension to it.

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The Pug List: A Ridiculous Little Dog, a Family Who Lost Everything, and How They All Found Their Way Home by Alison Hogsdon (Zondervan, 2016) – Read

After an arsonist torched their house, the Hogsdon family had to rebuild not only their home, but their lives. Their story about the effect of trauma and the nature of resilience would make a great read, but when you add in the tale of youngest daughter Eden’s quest to get a dog – not just any dog, but a black Pug – the story becomes a memorable page-turner. Hogsdon’s warmth and honesty let us all into the messy journey into learning how to live life after an unimaginable tragedy.

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Still Life: A Memoir Of Living Fully With Depression by Gillian Marchenko (InterVarsity Press, 2016)

I’ve experienced two bouts of clinical depression during the last decade. As a result, I’m really looking forward to reading Marchenko’s account of learning to deal with depression in the same way she would deal with physical illness. She also writes about the battle to hang on to her faith in the darkness, only to discover the ways in which she is being held by God, her family, and her community.

What’s in your stack?

When The Heart Waits: Chapter 7

September 1, 2015 By Michelle Van Loon

I suppose I’d also come looking for some way to wait in my own darkness, to turn it into the kind of dark night that could incubate newness. Darkness remains deadening and nontransforming – like the tomb – unless we learn how to turn it into a creative and life-giving experience. – Sue Monk Kidd

I’ve been blogging my way through Sue Monk Kidd’s book on midlife. (Earlier installments in this series can be found here.) Chapter 7, entitled “Incubating The Darkness”, addresses what St. John of the Cross famously called the dark night of the soul.* Sue Monk Kidd explains, “God guides us the long way round. And sometimes that means winding through a dark wood. It doesn’t mean we’re lost, however. The darkness is a part of the trip. Too many of us panic in the dark. We don’t understand that it’s a holy dark and that the idea is to surrender to it and journey through the real light.”

Midlife’s changes can include depression. It did for me, and I found myself sitting in a counselor’s chair as I worked through the wet, thick hopelessness that blanketed my days and disrupted my nights. Though the dark night of the soul may overlap with clinical depression, the two are not identical. “In the…darkness, God often seems absent,” she explains. “We begin to encounter Deus absconditis – the sense that God is playing hide and seek. I believe that what we’re experiencing, however, is the hiding of an old way of knowing and experiencing God, the crumbling of our ‘creation’ of who God is and the divine system that our egos have invested in.”

The dark night experience isn’t limited to midlife, though it certainly is a mile marker on the journey for many of us. This kind of darkness is a reminder that we can not go back to an earlier version of our lives or our belief system. It is a gift, but it is the kind of gift that can only be received fully in retrospect. Once we begin to discern that we may have entered a dark night of our soul and discover that there is no way out except to move through it, we can learn to work with it rather than fear or attempt to flee it. Kidd writes,

One way we coax the life of the new self is by living the questions that inhabit our dark night, by dwelling creatively with the unresolved inside us.

I lived with questions about who I had been and who I was becoming, and about whether the growth was worth the pain, risk, and upheaval. I lived with questions about how to adopt parts of myself I had orphaned, how to heal old wounds, how to relate to an expanding vision of God and the world.

I didn’t like the disorder and anxiety the questions produced, and I didn’t like the unknowing…

Jesus was a master at using questions to pull people into self-confrontation and growth. ‘What are you looking for?’ ‘Do you want to get well?’ ‘Who do you say that I am?’ ‘Why do you not understand what I say?’ ‘Do you love me?’ The New Testament is full of them.

Most of us aren’t comfortable living with the tension of unresolved questions. “We’re more apt to try to quell the conflict by banishing the unwanted side of the opposites,” she notes. Maybe not so coincidentally, I’ve discovered I have the clearest view of the upside-down, inside-out kingdom of God in the tensions. Those tensions, improbable and impossible, are where a word moves a mountain. And those unresolved questions tend to push us forward, further into the dark.

God intends those dark nights of the soul to “burn us clean”, in contrast with neurotic suffering which is marked by self-pity and despair. King David reminds us that even the darkness is not dark to God: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.” (Ps. 139:11, 12) He is there in the darkness with us. Kidd writes, “When we’re knocked off our feet by pain, the welts raised upon our soul are experienced by God, who is closer than our own skin.”

It might be hard to believe in the darkness, but this is indeed what the dark night of the soul can teach us if we’re willing to cooperate with it. If we’ve been through it and found ourselves on the other side of it, the best gift we can give to others experiencing this facet of spiritual life is to orient them to it by sharing our experience. Our well-meaning tendency to try to fix it, which is often rooted in our own discomfort with the darkness, can short-circuit what God is actually doing in someone else’s life.

If you’ve ever experienced a dark night of the soul, what or who helped orient you to what was happening?

* If you’re looking to do additional exploration on this and related topics, you can read St. John’s work here. I also recommend Marlena Graves’ A Beautiful Disaster and Kathleen Norris’ Acedia and Me.

Image via Creative Commons 2.0 search/Flickr

Passing On A Legacy Of Epic Marriage

February 2, 2015 By Michelle Van Loon

Mike and Diane Siri offer a great example of what a second act in life and ministry might look like. They’d each built successful careers in the business world during the first half of their lives.

“After twenty-five years in the corporate world, I realized I wasn’t pursuing my passion, which is the development and nurturing of God-honoring relationships,” Mike told me. “As I began pursuing a path of helping others restore, nurture and celebrate relationships, a vision began to form of a family retreat center. Around the same time, Diane completed her master’s degree and received her credentials as a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor. As she began to build her practice, she realized much of her work was also around relationships – helping individuals, couples and families restore broken ones or recover from difficult ones.”

The couple opened The Relationship Center in a bright, big storefront space in Wauconda, IL in 2009. The Center has offered a variety of spiritual formation groups, provided meeting space for church and community gatherings, and houses Diane’s counseling practice. I first met Mike through my work with the former Catalyst Lake County/Christ Together Chicago church networking organization. When I felt as though depression would swallow me whole four years ago, God led me to Diane’s offices. When If Only released last summer, I had the book release celebration at The Relationship Center.

As the Siris have continued to develop their work, God has clarified for them what he’s given them to pass on to others. “The assignment I sensed God giving me was two-fold,” Mike said. “The first was to be a mentor to husbands and fathers by simply sharing the wisdom I have gained through my marriage journey. Part two was to partner with my wife, Diane, in working with couples on their relationships with God and each other through counseling and teaching. Of all of the assignments I have been given over the years, by God and by man, none is more exciting to me than this one. I have the privilege of playing some part in God’s plan of revival by simply sharing and teaching about what I love the most – being a husband and a father.”

To that end, the couple has developed the Epic Marriage workshop. The Epic Marriage approach is markedly different than the usual How To (Quick) Fix Your Marriage offerings offered by many churches, which tend to focus on tasks and external behaviors: go on a weekly date night, improve communication, have more sex, get your financial house in order. While each of those have value, the Siris call to bring renewal to marriages flows from their desire to help each individual discover who God has made them to be in marriage. I recently had an opportunity to ask Mike some questions about how the Epic Marriage message was formed in them, and what they’re seeing God do as they come alongside churches to provide content that is bringing real, permanent change to the couples with whom they’re working.

Q. How long have you and Diane been married? Can you tell me a little bit about your respective faith journeys and where you currently attend church?

We have been married for 35 years and have been blessed with two awesome daughters, Katie and Molly, who are both amazing wives to two great sons-in-law, Dave and Joe. Molly and Joe are expecting their first baby – our first grandchild – this summer.

We were both raised in traditional liturgical denominations and worshiped in the same for the first 20 years of our marriage before being led to experience other denominational churches. We had the blessing of individually attending renewal weekends early on in our marriage which helped us understand what a relationship with God looks like and to begin the journey of experiencing Him first hand. Through the leading of the Holy Spirit, we have been called to and are members of The Sign of the Dove Church in Waukegan, IL, which is a racially- and economically-diverse, full-gospel, non-denominational body of believers.

Q. What was the impetus that launched the two of you into trying to help other couples strengthen their marriages?

I realized years ago I was content with a very good marriage but God didn’t create very good – He created what we’ve deemed as EPIC. We see the increased attack of evil on marriages. God’s plan is to revive these relationships. We have been blessed by the refinement that has taken place in our marriage through the refinement of us individually and through the understanding of God’s purpose and design for marriage and the conviction to seek that.

Q. What makes your Epic Marriage workshop different than all of the marriage seminars and retreats offered by various churches? What is your emphasis? Who would benefit most from attending a workshop like this?

What separated us from other workshops or conferences is that we bring both a psychological and spiritual focus to the teaching – a male/female and counselor/coach approach. Close to a third of the time in is focused on the individual – intimacy with self – before we focus on intimacy with God and with each other. Over the 10 weeks we develop relationships with the attendees which may result in further counseling and coaching once the workshop is complete. We would discourage couples who are in crisis from attending, but rather they seek individual counseling first.

Q. What would you most want church leaders to know about your ministry? About the way in which they counsel/coach pre-married and married couples?

So much of the teaching and counseling today focuses on behavior rather that the heart of the individuals/couple. The behavior is usually the result of woundedness or faulty teaching, and leads to bitterness, unforgiveness and retaliation. If that’s not addressed, understood and healed, the marriage relationship can not fulfill God’s plan and purpose. When we do pre-marital counseling, most often through Diane’s counseling training and experience, we often uncover brokenness that has not been addressed and if left alone will lead to conflict once the “honeymoon” is over. Our work with couples, whether married or moving toward it, most often begins with, and always includes, individual work.

Q. What are your dreams for this ministry?

Wow! Our dream is what God told us – that He would bring revival through marriage, one couple at a time, and that He would use us in that process. We hope to continue moving toward Epic in our own marriage, experiencing the joy that that brings, and share the wisdom from our journey with others seeking that same joy of the Master. We love teaching the workshop and adding more wisdom to it each time we present it. We want to offer it more and more, both at The Relationship Center and at churches, and we hope to train up other couples in the process who can facilitate the workshop and be mentors for marriage at their church.

Q. How would you like people to pray for you? If they have questions, how would they contact you?

Pray for a revival of understanding in the church about what it means to be in a covenant marriage, of greater understanding of God’s plan and design for marriage and that Diane and I will be obedient in whatever God calls us to in this area. We can be reached through our website or via email (mike (AT) therelationshipcenter.org)

Image: Creative Commons 2.0

1938 Menu Hacks

December 15, 2014 By Michelle Van Loon

I’ve always loved reading old cook books. My mom hated to cook, so our weeknight dinners when I was growing up were usually broiled steaks with iceberg lettuce salads and Green Giant frozen vegetables in rotation with Chinese take-out, McDonald’s, or pizza. Long before I was first introduced to cooking in my middle school Home Economics classes, I was reading recipes in the Good Housekeeping magazine that arrived in our mailbox each month. We had a few mostly-unused cookbooks on a shelf in our kitchen cabinent, including an old Settlement Cook Book. This book, with the subtitle “The Way To A Man’s Heart”, was first published near the turn of the last century by a Milwaukee woman named Lizzie Black Kander who worked with with new immigrants in a social work effort modeled on Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago. Though the book is not a Jewish cookbook per se (lots of ham and shellfish recipes in there, for starters), Kander’s work focused on helping the flood of new immigrants into her community assimilate into American culture. An NPR story on the classic book noted:

For recent Jewish arrivals from Eastern Europe, The Settlement Cook Book was an instruction manual for the American kitchen and an introduction to American life. These immigrants looked, dressed, worshipped and even ate differently than did the established — and often prosperous — German-American Jews of Milwaukee, who feared that the new arrivals would pull them down and even inspire a new wave of anti-Semitism.

“Certainly there was true philanthropic goodness,” says Nora Rubel, who teaches the history of religion at the University of Rochester in New York. “But I think there was also an underlying concern that if they didn’t Americanize they would reflect badly on the Jews that were already there — partly because they were so visible.”

Kander created a one-stop encyclopedia of information included hundreds of recipes, menu suggestions, canning instructions, infant feeding recommendations and more. For me, the book was a window into the lives of my grandmothers. They had to build a fire to use their stoves, kept food in the icebox, and cooked from scratch because there were no plastic bags of Green Giant vegetables in their freezers. The Settlement Cookbook referenced the mix of Eastern European Jewish flavors I’d tasted in the kitchens of my grandmothers: homemade strudels, kugels, kasha and matzo balls graced their tables along with convenience foods like jarred gefilte fish and bakery-bought rugelach. And the cookbook helped its readers understand how to cook the kind of American foods their new neighbors were eating such as the oh-so-exotic Spanish rice, pork roast and shrimp cocktail.

I could leaf through the book, and imagine what it was like for them when they were young wives and mothers, cooking meals for their families. I could travel through time back to the 1930’s, `40’s or early `50’s to watch over their shoulders as they diced onions and kneaded dough to feed their families.

My mother-in-law passed her own 1938 copy of the book on to me years ago. I happened across it the other day as I was digging through a box of books. As this is a time of year when many are rifling through their recipe boxes to make recipes that taste like memories, I thought I’d share a few gems from the book just for fun.

Can you imagine using this menu to feed your toddler? Not a single chicken nugget in sight.

Is this fruitcake’s angry cousin? My people were not mincemeat people. If you ever ate something like this (especially if your family’s recipe included tongue), please leave a comment below to tell us if this was a delicious family memory or your worst holiday nightmare.

wine — The country was still mired in the Great Depression at the time my edition of the cookbook was released. The motto “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without” could have been imprinted on most every page of this volume. Our country’s economic conditions combined with the poverty faced by the new immigrants speak to the kind of simple, frugal recipes throughout the book. Nothing was wasted. Not even organ meats like liver, tongue…or sweetbreads.

Is there a recipe from grandma or a traditional food that graces your table at this time of year? It wouldn’t be the holidays without…what? Please share your answer in a comment below!

Interview: Love Letters From The Edge

July 21, 2014 By Michelle Van Loon

I’ve been talking a lot about my book lately in this space. I’m grateful for the opportunity to share its message with you! However, this week, I’m looking forward to highlighting the writing of others.

Today, I want to draw your attention to an excellent resource for those who’ve experienced trauma and/or loss. Love Letters From The Edge (free today only on Kindle!) is a beautifully-written series of letters that gives voice to experience of a trauma survivor – and the way in which God would respond to those words. Twelve weeks’ worth of entries make this book an excellent devotional-style companion – but this is far more than a devotional book. The words come from two authors who have walked long in the valley of the shadow formed by trauma and loss, and can speak truthfully and graciously about the experience.

I had the honor of reading an advance copy of the book and wrote these words of endorsement:

Love Letters From The Edge contains some of the most wise, frank and courageous prayers you will ever read. Those who’ve survived trauma, abuse, or the pain of loss will recognize their own emotions, struggles and questions mirrored in the words of this book. But this is not a one-way heaven-aimed monologue. Shelly Beach and Wanda Sanchez invite survivors into a two-way conversation with the Lord of love. This is the kind of love letter that can speak into the deepest crevices of a hurting heart. Highly recommended.

If you’d like to know more about the book, I’m happy to share a bit of an interview Beach and Sanchez did that tells a bit more about the story behind the Letters:

Give us an overview of Love Letters from the Edge. Why is this book different from others on the market?

This book is different from most others because it gives a voice to the hurting by expressing their suffering and pain in letters to God. Those who have been traumatized and deeply wounded by life often feel like it’s unspiritual to express anger, frustration, and questions to God. The church can sometimes make us feel guilty for doubting and expressing honest feelings. But God wants us to bring our questions, doubts and anger to him. The psalms show us that in our deepest pain, loss, and suffering, we’re to cry out to God. Those cries aren’t always wrapped up in polite phrases.

But God sees us, knows us and loves us when we are experiencing our deepest despair. His love never changes based on our emotions or actions. Love Letters from the Edge allows women to know that they are not alone in feeling pain and frustration and that God loves them relentlessly. It is a more than a book of devotions or meditations: it is a conversation between a broken, hurting daughter and her loving father.

Why is post-traumatic stress disorder an important issue for women and the general population to understand? Why should the church be talking about it?

Trauma can be simply defined as “any experience that overwhelms the brain.” The “overwhelming” part of the definition means that a chemical wash shuts down half of the brain and “traps” the experience on one side, so the person cannot file the experience with a beginning, middle, and end as other experiences are stored. Approximately 8% of the general population suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. 10% of women will suffer from PTSD in their lifetime. PTSD can be caused by medical trauma (cancer, cardiac symptoms/treatment, spinal surgery, invasive procedures, miscarriages), natural disasters, the separation of adoption (parent or child), sexual or physical abuse, violence or threat of violence, caregiver stress, job-related stress (law enforcement, firefighters, first responders, social workers, etc.), military service, and many other situations common to life.

The simple truth is that someone you know is suffering from trauma and may not know it or understand the symptoms. In inner cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, the rates of PTSD are higher than for the military returning from Afghanistan.

Women in particular can suffer in silence and isolation for years with escalating symptoms and not understand why. The church needs to work to create greater understanding of brain illness in general as part of overall health and stewardship of our bodies and caring for one another. We need to understand what people with PTSD feel like and how to better help them cope with their symptoms and seek effective treatments.

Can you give an overview of PTSD—what it looks like and what it feels like? And how does PTSD impact people of faith?

Very briefly, traumatic experiences affect the brain’s ability to file experiences in the proper sequence in memory and within the other contexts that our brain creates. This means that people who develop the symptoms of PTSD often live with many symptoms that the brain uses to cope with the disconnections.

Symptoms include addictions, eating disorders, self-abuse, depression, suicidal thoughts, dissociation (zoning out or “going away” to cope with overwhelming environments and triggers), avoidance of situations or people or places that remind them of the traumatizing event), loss of interest, isolation, fatalistic thinking, panic or anxiety attacks. Those with PTSD can also experience physical problems such as chronic headaches, nausea, body pain, and other symptoms.

Most people with PTSD feel great shame. They often struggle with their symptoms and addictions for years and seek treatment after treatment with the feeling that they may never be able to overcome their particular addictions or behaviors. If they are Christians, they feel further shame because they feel these behaviors are “wrong.” They may have experienced the judgment of those who believe that Scripture, healing prayer, and faith are sufficient to overcome their symptoms.

However, it’s important to remember that the symptoms of PTSD are the result of a physical, bio-chemical response in the brain. Treating only the symptoms (addictions, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, etc.) of PTSD without treating the trauma itself is much like treating the symptoms of cancer (nausea, pain, etc.) without treating the actual cancer itself. Churches are often helpful in providing programs that treat the symptoms of trauma without understanding how to treat trauma itself.

Who’s your audience for this book, and what qualifies the two of you to write about these issues?

Our audience for this book is a woman who’s experienced overwhelming pain or suffering in her life and has struggled with symptoms of PTSD or in her faith or someone who wants to understand hurting women better or who provides spiritual counsel or therapy to broken women.

To learn more about Beach and Sanchez’ ministry, PTSD Perspectives, click here.

Interview: Marlena Graves/A Beautiful Disaster

June 2, 2014 By Michelle Van Loon

One of the first things that struck me about Marlena Graves’ writing was how very grounded she was. She could provide great analysis about disturbing cultural trends while at the same time managing to point her readers in the direction of the Jesus she loved. We’d first connected several years ago via our contributions to Christianity Today’s popular Her.meneutics blog. (Click here to have a peek at some of the topics Marlena has tackled for the site.) She has written about tough topics ranging from female masturbation to the Trayvon Martin verdict to the social and spiritual effects of poverty with grace, intelligence and wisdom far beyond her years. Hers is a voice worth listening to if you are in search of a writer who is willing to ask hard questions about church and culture from a position of deeply-rooted faith and spiritual practice.

It is this rock-solid commitment to nurturing spiritual formation in the lives of her readers that led her to write the new Brazos Press release, A Beautiful Disaster: Finding Hope In The Midst of Brokenness. In the tradition of the early Desert Fathers and Mothers, as well as the saints since then who’ve written their own accounts of the way in which God leads us through suffering, silence and a disconcerting sense of spiritual disconnection into the windswept, barrenness of the metaphorical desert in order to strip us in love of our wrong ideas. In the kind of paradox that highlights the economy of the kingdom of God, our brokenness is the place from which we discover the abundance of God. I commend Marlena’s book to you if the “Five Easy Steps” formulae in which Christian principles for self-improvement have left you impoverished and frustrated. A Beautiful Disaster is about leaving simplistic approaches behind and following Jesus out into the wilderness of the broken parts of your own life and discovering that he has been waiting there for you all along.

I asked Marlena to tell us a little bit more about her book:

Q. What led you to write A Beautiful Disaster?

A. As young as ten years old, I’d cry out to God, “ Please, father and mother me. Show me how to live!” Here I was in a child-sized body trying to solve adult-sized problems. My parents loved my siblings and me dearly and we loved them. But they were trying to figure out how to live themselves. And so, I grew up in a household full of daily upheaval. Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I experienced a lifetime of crises squeezed into a short period of time. These included:

Poverty- the kind where we often had nothing to eat except school lunches. I remember opening the refrigerator door only to stare into a vast emptiness. My abuelita, who lived with us, stilled our hunger by making flatbread out of oil, flour, salt, and water. Many times we had no good source of heat in the dead of winter because we couldn’t afford the astronomical prices of fuel oil needed to fill our tank.

Our fireplace in the living room didn’t work properly. It only heated the immediate area. So at night, I’d bury myself under as many covers as possible. I loathed awakening to the smoke filled air that stung my lungs and then sliding out of bed into the frigid cold. I’d climb on the bus mortified because the smell of smoke clung to my hair and clothes. I could do nothing about it.

I hated holidays, especially Christmas. There were so many times when we had nothing—not a tree, not a gift, no family to visit or come visit and no special meal. It was like many other days only worse because it was supposed to be a day of warmth and joy. Moreover, we spent many holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving cutting and hauling wood so my dad could earn gas money to get to work. When I left for college, I vowed that I’d never split and haul wood again.

Loneliness – we lived out in the country. Our closest neighbors were ¼ to a ½ mile away. We spent a lot of time alone among ourselves. The school was too far away to be too involved in activities. Friends were long distance; remember long distance?

The effects of mental illness on the family – DUIs, adultery, daily chaos, depression, and confusion of reality

A house fire

The effects of my own bad decisions with romantic relationships

There wasn’t much to do where I lived—I was hemmed in by my geographical isolation. So, after I was done with whatever homework and chores I had to do, I’d spend time reading the Bible. For about four years, from the ages of 10-14, I’d spend 2-3 hours a day reading the Bible. I spent a good chunk of that time reading the Old Testament. I identified strongly with those in exile, especially the Hebrew people. I could see myself and situation in the stories of the their suffering.

I also started to believe that God could and did act on my behalf in the way that he did for the Israelites and others in the Bible. I knew that their God was my God and that in Jesus Christ, I was not forgotten or invisible. Because of our isolation, I didn’t know how different my life was from others. I attended church, but watching my devout Roman Catholic with a third grade education struggle daily to read the Bible, reading the Scriptures on my own, praying, and listening to radio preachers on the local Christian radio station were how I was initially formed in the way of Jesus.

And in college and afterward, I realized that those closest to God spent considerable time in the physical desert and also experienced protracted internal wildernesses. Abraham, Moses, Miriam, Hannah, David, Elijah, Jesus, John the Baptist, Paul, John on Patmos, church fathers and mothers, those throughout history, and even us today have had our deserts.

They learned obedience through suffering. So, the suffering I loathed and wouldn’t wish upon anyone else, that very thing, whether they were major crises or moments of quiet desperation, in that desert, I saw God. To my surprise, God used my disasters to form me into the image of Jesus. And I think that can be the same for all of us. That’s why I wrote the book.

Q.Who are you trying to reach with this book?

A. Those who’ve felt forgotten by God and invisible. Those who are full of fear because of life circumstances. Those who are waiting on God to answer prayer, and those who doubt and struggle with the problem of evil. These are all wilderness experiences.

Q. In your introduction you state that the desert is “a blessing disguised as a curse”. In what ways do you see people running from/fighting the desert in their lives? Why are we so uncomfortable with the notion of a desert – or of suffering /privation that we imagine goes with desert?

You know, I think we’re all inclined to do whatever is within our power to anesthetize ourselves against suffering whether the suffering is a result of our own decisions or things outside of our control.

A Beautiful Disaster reminds us that the desert may be precisely where God wants us to be. Thank you, Marlena.