Hopeful Lament

Tending Our Grief Through Spiritual Practices

Terra McDaniel

• Publisher: IVP Formatio
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781514004371
• Topic: Theology & Religion

ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award

We need to rediscover lament to heal and hope again.

We've lost the practice of lament. Most people don't know how to process personal or communal mourning and instead struggle to honor their tears, vulnerability, and the full weight of these disillusioning times. But tending our grief might be exactly what we need to reimagine a way forward.

Tracing her difficult experiences of a catastrophic home fire, a threat to her child's well-being, and other devastating losses and upheavals, Terra McDaniel offers a clear framework for expressing heartache and burdens. McDaniel says, "Lament is surprisingly hopeful. As strange as that may sound now, I promise it's true. It's an act of trust both that we can face pain and survive, and that God cares about our anger, confusion, doubt, grief, and fear. Lament refuses to bury pain or, just as dangerous, to give in to despair."

Hopeful Lament makes space for the powerful act of crying out before a loving God and offers provoking reflection questions, embodied practices, and applications for families with children. Learn how to journey gently through suffering.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: When the Last Resort Is the Only Choice
• 1 Ashes for Beauty
• 2 How Grieving Got Lost
• 3 Learning to Speak Sadness
• 4 Letting Sorrow Be a Conversation with God
• 5 Grief Work
• 6 Trauma and the Courage to Lament
• 7 Lamenting When Community Is Toxic
• 8 Grieving Together
• 9 Children and Loss
• 10 Finding the Way Through Lament
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Recommended Reading
• Praise for Hopeful Lament
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright