Drawing on her own experience of the loss of two children as well as responses from people who participated in her survey about grief, Guthrie pulls back the curtain and helps readers think about how they can show love and support to someone who is mourning.
What if we were to embrace the gifts of the long haul rather than racing for the exits?
“We who are weak remind the entire church that salvation comes only through God and not through our self-sufficient striving.”
Trauma is extraordinary, she says, “not because it rarely happens, but because it swallows up and destroys normal human ways of living.” We have a choice. “We can flit from one cause to another or, like Jesus, we can leave our place of comfort and enter into the suffering.”
We must deal with pain and suffering truthfully — as Scripture does — and following the example of Christ.
We’re forever praying about health. We intercede for our suffering friends, asking God to heal them and alleviate their pain. But in a world where we’re all moving toward decay and physical difficulty, should that be our main concern?
“I would watch people show up for Kara and do these amazing things, and I would think, I never would have thought of that, but look at how that person knew that that was something only they could do.”