I am excited that this book on the Power of Laments is actually coming out! It is a project that has developed over the past 10 years as I have learned to process my own grief after Lew’s death thirteen years ago. It has been a journey of acknowledging and expressing my own grief and then finding God’s presence in the middle of it.

While at a retreat, I was challenged to write a lament about something that had been a significant loss in my life. Writing was not my favorite activity, but after writing some laments about “safer” topics, I began to write about the deeper buried pains and losses, like my husband’s death and the miscarriage of our second child. As I wrote, I began to see God’s presence and the work He had been doing in my life to restore hope and direction.

An added project began to emerge as I looked at various Bible persons who went through very difficult experiences. I tried to put myself in their shoes and to write the emotions and challenges that they faced, seeing at a much deeper level how God met them, challenged them, changed them, and used them in the expansion of His kingdom. God does use grief and hard times to shape us and make us His vessel for the sake of His work, if we let him.

Over the past year, I have gathered these laments, both my personal experiences and the reflections on biblical individuals, into a small booklet. I have also included ideas and suggestions about how you can write your own.

This has felt like a tremendous personal victory of overcoming my fear of writing and publishing something that is so personal. Since high school, I had been telling myself that I can’t write! My fields were math and science! But I had to admit I had written a PhD dissertation that was pretty good. I CAN WRITE!! This booklet is also a personal victory. I hope this is the first of more to come!!

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