The Healing Power of Pain & Memory - Book Review

A Crazy, Holy Grace

The author's knows what it means to deal with pain, grief, and grace from a child after his father committed suicide. He shares that God is near even when He is silent.

The author's best writings covering such topic as loss of a loved one.

Loss/death will come to all of us, but we are not alone. God's holy healing grace is always present and available if we are quiet enough to receive it.

Through the gates of pain we enter into joy.

It seems that pain and death are on the rise, lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce, ready or not. Our lives are filled with freak accidents, cancer, and the steady decay of time. Stories of destruction and pain come at us from everywhere - our news, TV shows, movies, and social media sites - because fear and death seem to sell.

Simply put, suffering is universal.

We all have different ways of dealing with our pain, depending on what day it happens to be and how we happen to be feeling.

The author's mother had not only the suicide of his father but two other unsuccessful marriages. She lived to be a great age, and in many ways she remained a valuable person.

The author shares there could be a hundred and six other ways we have of coping with pain.

You don't have to talk about pain, but you have to live out of your pain.

Through the gates of pain we enter into joy.

God says He is with us on our journeys. He says he has been with us since each of our journeys began. Listen for God.

It is to choose to believe that the truth of our story is contained in Jesus's story, which is a love story. Jesus's story is the truth about who we are and who the God is who Jesus says loves us.

"And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the the way, and when you rise."

Frederick Buechner is the author of more than 30 books and has been important source of inspiration and learning for many readers. He has been awarded honorary degrees from institutions institutions including Yale University and Virginia Theological Seminary.