Living With Hope Series

Discovering how to live with dementia "I'm a stranger in a strange land," sighed the dignified gentleman Janet L. Ramsey met walking down the care-center hallway. Those words, her first glimpse of the confusion that comes with dementia, led her into a lifetime of work with older adults. If you have been diagnosed with dementia or you are accompanying someone with this illness, you may find yourself on a journey that began with a sudden diagnosis and an acute sense of panic. Or perhaps your journey started gradually, as you noticed changes in yourself or in your partner or parent. Whether sudden or gradual, the impact of a diagnosis of dementia reorganizes a family's entire life. Drawing on her own experience as a pastor, teacher, therapist, and family caregiver, as well as on interviews with eight family and professional caregivers, Janet L. Ramsey helps caregivers and those with impaired memories learn as they listen to each other. She also shows them how the Holy Spirit can awaken their imagination and understanding while they discover how to live with dementia.

Companionship and strategies for job seekers Millions of people become unemployed every year, yet when job loss happens to us, we typically feel completely alone and often lost, ashamed, and afraid. No one knows how to comfort us when we lose our job. Unlike other griefs--when someone can say, "I'm sorry for your loss"--joblessness leaves family, friends, and acquaintances awkwardly searching for words. Jobs Lost, Faith Found is for those who feel alone due to job loss. It is also for those who offer respect, companionship, guidance, and resources to the unemployed. Mary C. Lindberg, pastor, chaplain, and spiritual director, draws on her family's experience of unemployment and the wisdom of many others, including sages from Scripture and the Christian tradition, to help readers discover a sense of worth and purpose on their way to a new job. She offers prayers, insights, Bible stories, and reflections to light the way during this time of uncertainty and wandering. The path toward hope will be your own, but the ideas, reflections, and strategies in this book will get you started on your journey.

In They Don't Come with Instructions, Hollie M. Holt-Woehl offers wise companionship for the journey with a developmentally challenged child. The mother of a son with an autism diagnosis, Holt-Woehl recognizes that parenting is never easy. Challenges abound as parents help children grow up and find their place in the world. But she knows firsthand that adding a developmental challenge makes parenting far more complex. Drawing on her own experience and that of nearly forty other parents she surveyed for this book, Holt-Woehl shares stories, information, and insights about tending to the pain, recognizing the joy, and finding ways to keep hope through the ups and downs of this path. The book focuses on the challenges of parenting children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD), and/or Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). Not only parents, but friends, family, and members of faith communities who seek to understand what it is like to live with a developmentally challenged child will appreciate Holt-Woehl's down-to-earth and compassionate approach.

Trends and skills for those who offer pastoral care Christian pastoral care has changed a great deal in the past few decades in response to many factors in our rapidly changing world. In part 1 of Nurturing Hope, Lynne Baab discusses seven trends in pastoral care--shifts in who delivers pastoral care, the attitudes and commitments that undergird pastoral care, and societal trends that are shaping pastoral care today. She illustrates them with stories from diverse congregations where Christian caregivers are meeting those challenges in creative and exciting ways. In the second half of the book, Baab presents four practical, doable, energizing skills needed by pastoral carers in our time. Focusing on skills that help carers nurture connections between everyday life and Christian faith, she explores the need for carers to understand common stressors, listen, pray with others, and nurture their personal resilience. Grounded in an understanding of God as the true caregiver and healer, the author offers tips for readers who are training other pastoral carers or developing their own understanding and skills. Each chapter ends with discussion and reflection questions, making the book helpful for groups. Lynne Baab brings readers hope for their caring role and for their own spiritual journey.

How growing in self-awareness deepens relationships From their years of counseling individuals, couples, and families, George Faller and Heather Wright show how to repair conflict, move from disconnection to reconnection, and discover God's movement in our life and relationships. They call their model NAME IT (Notice, Acknowledge, Merge, Embrace, Integrate, and Thank). To heal a relationship, first we connect with our own hearts and stories, then understand the other person's position, and finally merge those two truths (or versions of what is happening), giving birth to a new connection. By telling their own stories and those of clients they have cared for, Faller and Wright encourage those who feel disconnected not to despair in the midst of their trials but to find faith and a community to help them survive and grow. They show readers that rather than letting painful relationships leave them feeling alone and despairing, they can find hope in a deepened self-awareness that leads to richer relationships and spiritual vitality. Whether readers hope to experience the magical glow of romance, the joy of parenting, the satisfaction of community life, or a loving view of God, the NAME IT model will help them transform all their relationships.

Support and wisdom when serious illness strikes Sally Wilke gets it. She has lived with and through the serious chronic illness of someone she cared deeply about. And she has provided pastoral care to individuals and families in similar situations. Waiting for Good News captures her hard-won, helpful, and hope-filled wisdom. Wilke organizes this book around seven questions that those who face serious illness often ask. From "What Is the Diagnosis" to "Where Do I Find More Help?" she accompanies readers on their own journey. The heart of the book is the stories--Wilke's own, those of others who have struggled with severe illness, and accounts from the Bible. Here, readers will find strength, support, and a way forward in a difficult situation. As practical as she is wise, Wilke offers tools, tips, ideas, and resources for reflection and for obtaining additional support. Chapters conclude with questions that may be used for personal reflection and discussion with family members, patients, and support groups. Clergy, other pastoral-care providers, and family and friends of those who struggle with serious illness will find examples and helpful practices to guide their efforts as they partner with those seeking to find their way.

Carrying Them with Us: Living through Pregnancy and Infant Loss is a reflection on what pastors David Engelstad and Catherine Malotky have learned since the day in 1984 when their eight-week-old daughter Erin died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Drawing on their own loss, they offer themselves as companions to parents who struggle to deal with the end of an eagerly anticipated pregnancy or the death of a joyfully welcomed baby. Readers will find in Carrying Them with Us comfort and wisdom, a spiritual perspective, and practical guidance. The authors also invite into this journey the caregivers--family, clergy and medical professionals, and friends--who accompany grieving parents. The book is organized around five questions the authors have found central to many parents' unfolding story: (1) How can this have happened? (2) Why do I feel like this? (3) How do I keep going? (4) What do I make of life after this? And (5) Who am I becoming? Engelstad and Malotky show readers a path from devastating sadness toward healing, a way for grieving parents to keep going and, one day, to embrace new life.

How to heal from trauma and restore laughter, love, and faith When trauma wounds, victims are thrown into unexpected darkness and experience unfamiliar symptoms. Some trauma survivors draw upon a lifelong faith in God; others find themselves in a wilderness devoid of spiritual grounding. The recovery stories in this book offer diverse pathways to faith and hope. In When Trauma Wounds, psychologist Karen A. McClintock combines psychological approaches with faith resources to improve trauma recovery. Whether you are a trauma survivor, a caregiving pastor or church member, or friend to a survivor, this book will familiarize you with trauma symptoms and healing strategies. Secure and trusting relationships heal many wounds. If you care for a trauma survivor, McClintock will help you create a sanctuary to shelter this wounded soul, to help them bear their pain and hold out hope for recovery--to offer victims of trauma the compassion they so badly need. Each trauma victim has a story to tell. If you are a trauma survivor, healing from that trauma or working through repeated traumatic experiences may take days or years. But no matter how long your healing journey might take, it can begin right now.

Discover hope, comfort, transformation--the gifts given in grief Too often, we think of loss like we might a broken bone. We leave the bone alone, protect it from bumps, and wait. We think eventually everything will go back to normal, the same as it always was. But losing a loved one is nothing like a broken arm. Loss is amputation, and the path to healing doesnÂt lead back to the same, only ahead to the different. A Grief Received offers a personal, authentic, and practical approach to weathering grief with hope. Writing with deep insight, JL Gerhardt draws on the loss of her younger brother when she was twenty-one, other personal experiences of grief, and her work in ministry alongside her husband, a minister and chaplain. Through nine practices grieving people can adopt to position themselves to receive the gifts of grief, Gerhardt provides touchstones readers will recognize and a path to personal transformation. Each chapter includes personal reflection questions and suggested resources. Gerhardt assumes the role of friend, partner, and speaker of sometimes-inconvenient but always-helpful truths. Readers will walk away comforted, directed, and inspired to seek God and God's shaping in their grief.

Companionship for the lifelong journey of recovery In Addiction and Recovery: A Spiritual Pilgrimage, Martha Postlethwaite--pastor and a person in recovery--reflects on her pilgrimage of healing through valleys of despair and vistas of resurrection. Addiction and Recovery is not just Postlethwaite's story, though. She also draws on the wisdom of pilgrims who have walked other paths to explore themes such as surrender, truth telling, shame, powerlessness, grace, forgiveness, and resurrection. Together, these chronicles bring hope to people who struggle with the disease of addiction and to those who love them. Each chapter ends with questions to reflect on with conversation partners or in a journal, and a spiritual practice. The spiritual practices are related to the chapter themes and serve as samplers, but they can be woven into the reader's own pilgrimage. Readers will recognize themselves in these stories and reflections, learn that they are not alone, and find reasons to hope as they make their own pilgrimage.