Losing Hope, Finding Hope: A Bereaved Mother's Journey of Restoration (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798340864314)

Two miscarriages. A subsequent premature live birth, a painful loss. Another high-risk, anxiety-ridden pregnancy. A bereaved mother's provokingly encouraging journey of restoration to wholeness.

Engaging, evocative, and expressive, Losing Hope, Finding Hope follows a young woman's complicated grieving journey into motherhood. From coping with paralysing disappointment, self-condemnation and loneliness, to questioning every belief she ever held, into the wondrous discovery of redemption and a Covenant ensuring a glorious present and future that is freely hers.

Finding Hope vividly captures among other things, the guilt, fear, depression, and PTSD accompanying the isolation of prolonged grief after repeated pregnancy losses. This, in addition to the living hope, peace, grace and possibilities that only this long, quiet season can inspire. At the heart of this chronicle is the author's Great Unlearning - a stripping away of unhelpful myths, worthless values, and man-man religion. Essentially, a gracious ushering into the only truth that has stood the test of time: God is real: He will never leave, nor forsake us.

Blending memoir and blistering social observations, the author recalls former desperate attempts at healing the injustice of recurrent (pregnancy) losses through false Word of Faith and New Age-inspired cult-like self-help methods, and melodramatic bargains with a 'God' fashioned in her own image over a lifetime.

Offering an honest and, at times, hilarious critique of burdensome modern cultural and religious forces, Emerson attests that viewing ourselves as never-ending self-improvement projects undoubtedly precipitates failure and unspeakable strife.

Emerson takes a good, hard look at the dark side of self-trust and self-compassion as they relate to modern iterations of faith in God. And how she eventually exploited an unanticipated period of rest to repudiate the encroaching misguided dogma of wellness and prosperity cultural expectations placed upon grieving parents, eventually finding Hope Himself, Jesus, and being transformed.

Finding Hope empowers the reader to move beyond the initial shock and traumatic loss of control, and appreciate what taking time to get back on your feet, protecting yourself from hurtful situations and reconnecting with your body and loved ones can be. Ultimately, it releases us to re-evaluate influences that exhaust, instead of free us. And, accordingly, motivates us to yield all we believe we are to the One who created us, knowing He'll restore our brokenness and reconstitute a new identity, dreams and realities that honour Him - all of which we would have never conjured up for ourselves.

Finding Hope is part memoir, part devotional, part resource for coping with the psychological, spiritual and social impacts of losing your child. It's a revelation that you don't need to live in fear for future pregnancies or perpetually exist oppressed by the lie that you have failed as a mother (or father) or worse, that you're being punished by a cruel, tyrant God. It demonstrates what faith in God is and isn't, and reveals the abundant, restorative healing power that comes when we rest and fully surrender our brokenness and emptiness to Him.

Author: Joy T. Emerson
ISBN-13: 9798340864314
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 10/01/2024
Pages: 350
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.13lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.78d