This is such a beautifully written and moving book about finding grace when suffering lasts. It exposes the felt shame, ineptitude and hopelessness of those who suffer long and hard, for those who have no healing, no relief. It speaks of the guilt of not getting better to those who constantly ask and pray expectantly! The feelings of shame that we have not been ‘fixed’.

But it also speaks deeply of finding grace in those hard places, in those places where no-one else can go with you, where there is such an aloneness and loneliness, those places which we would rather not go, roads we would not choose for ourselves, and yet which God chooses for us.

“What if the church treated suffering as a story to tell rather than a secret to keep till it passes?”. She believes suffering is for community and challenges us to accept, support, ‘be there’ for those who suffer without judgement, without expectation, just holding them in that place and sitting with them in it.

This is a book which I highly recommend, both for those who suffer, those who watch and those who minister and for those needing to find grace in the hard, unyielding places.

This book is available to purchase from Eden.co.uk.

Fiona M. Talbot, Plockton & Kyle Free Church