While there are pieces of advice, this is not a how-to book on suffering. This is a few levels short of a dissertation, full of notations and footnotes and references to neuroscientists and other theologians. Don't go in expecting some nice encouraging fluff. This book gets up close and personal with one overarching question: what does it mean if God doesn't end your suffering, like, maybe ever? What if some sufferings (or suffering in general) isn't a temporary valley but the path of your whole life? What if your marriage doesn't repair or you never do get pregnant or your family never reconciles or your illness or their illness is never cured?įramed around the author's expertise in theology, psychology and neuroscience, her life traumas and a decade with a chronic illness, let me say this book is two things: SMMMMMMMMMMMMART and real. Hello my name is Rachel and I love Christian nonfiction (preferably written by women) that looks at Hard Questions™ What if the church treated suffering like a story to tell rather than a secret to keep until it passes?

Together, we can encounter grace in the middle, where living with suffering that lingers can mean receiving God's presence that lasts. We are all mid-story in circumstances we did not choose, wondering when our hard things will end and where grace will come if they don't. Through personal story and insights from neuroscience and theology, Ramsey invites us to let our tears become lenses of the wonder that before God ever rescues us, he stands in solidarity with us.

This Too Shall Last offers an antidote to our cultural idolatry of effort and ease.

Instead, God invited her into a bigger story. Instead, she encountered the God who chose it. had to find a way across the widening canyon that seemed to separate God's goodness from her excruciating circumstances. Over a decade ago chronic illness plunged therapist and writer K.J. If God loves us, why does he allow us to hurt? When your prayers for healing haven't been answered, the fog of depression isn't lifting, your marriage is ending in divorce, or grief won't go away, it's easy to feel you've failed God or, worse, he's failed you. We silently, secretly wither under the pressure of living as though suffering is a predicament we can avoid or annihilate by having enough faith or trying harder. Our culture treats suffering like a problem to fix, a blight to hide, or the sad start of a transformation story. This book is not a before and after story.

Kj ramsey this too shall last