Why This Book
There was a moment in time…ok, well a few moments…ahhh, in truth, maybe a few million moments…when a series of losses swept me into the undertow of despair and I lost myself. Within a deep darkness, I couldn’t feel my face or see my toes. I couldn't find me anywhere.
After the only man I had ever known…I mean, really known, walked out the door, I was let go from my job, facing financial devastation leading to bankruptcy. Accompanied by a damaged not-beating-so-well heart, I lost my best friend to cancer, caring for her in the big hospital bed in the living room at the little house on Wilson Street, until my grief reached a groundswell and carried me away in its current.
It was then that I wondered what the words of the Man-God, whom I had followed since I was a small child, would say about all of this.
How did that “strange-one,” Jesus, talk about sadness and grief and despair? Was it just for some ancient character in some desert dune in another part of the globe, or could it repair the little girl — now growed-up with skinned knees and a bruised heart? Could his words heal me — the woman who was too sick to reach for his healing cloak on her own.
This is my tale, mixed with scriptural meanderings and stories from my life. And the steps that I, in looking back, realized had been the stepping stones to my wholeness.
Part stories. Part Scriptures. Part solutions. Jesus with those bright-yellow-rubber kitchen gloves on, washing the dirty dishes of my life. The baked on residue that stubbornly stuck.
Mostly, I wrote a book because, well…
My daughter told me to, by practically forcing me into this “Lysa TerKeurst thing” which actually made you write. Would you believe it? You have to write in a writing competition?
I could not abide the thought that my pain would be wasted…that excruciating “I don’t know what to do with it” kind of pain. What if there was someone out there who didn’t know what to do with their pain either?
This is why I write…to replace the vacancy left by my dissipating grief. Now I like to fill those spaces instead, with stories that heal, grant hope, and humor, and light to illuminate the darkest places. Then both of us will feel our faces and see our toes and say, “Ah. There we are.”