New Years Read

Due to the fact that January is just a natural time to regroup, reconnect, reorganize and step in different directions, I'm reading.  I love to read.  I love to read good stuff.  I especially love to read good stuff by authors I just happen to know.  This is the case with my new years' read:  Digesting Grief:  Comfort Food Beyond Cliches by Irene Nielson.

My relationship with Irene began as a child living in Great Falls, Montana.  My Dad's career as an Air Force man moved us to Big Sky country when I was in the second grade.  Sometime after, the Nielson's became family friends (see blog post on Oct. 13, 2013 entitled #191) and their two daughters kindred spirits.  Many moves and years later found Irene sitting in my Dad's living room recently, catching me up to speed on her life.  As a result, this book found it's way into my hands ... and now her words are sinking into my heart.

Irene writes this after knowing great grief, the loss of a 27 year old daughter to cancer.  Out of her pain, darkness, tears, questions, she writes an honest account of one who is trying to figure out this God she's followed for years but who has taken her quite by surprise.

"There's a place for grief ... a place to be perfected in love where we learn the value of trusting god without having all the answers ... yet.  Grief is good ... I can say that now." p. 29

I've not lost a person ... I think I'm grieving something I can not see.  Watching children grow up, parents age, my own ideals about life morph, those I love experience deep hurt ... it's all kind of caused a grief process.  And now, as I find myself in a place of rest, I sense a grieving.

Isn't that the story of all of us?  At one point or another, we stumble onto the fact that there are things that happen that go beyond our understanding, our tidy solutions, our plan.  It stumps us, throws us, upsets our way of thinking and causes us to rethink ... everything.  Irene writes of discovering God in a way that without having walked through grief she would not have known Him.  That's my hope as I read and let her words fall in my heart.

Reading and listening,
christina

Digesting Grief:  Comfort Food Beyond Cliches
Copyright 2009 by Irene S. Nielson
Steeple Books

To find out more about Irene Nielson, visit:  www.hisink.com