Recommendations based on "Is It Just Me?"

From the bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees, an inspiring autobiographical account of personal pain, spiritual awakening, and divine grace.Blending her own experience with an intimate grasp of spirituality, Sue Monk Kidd relates the passionate and moving tale of her spiritual crisis, when life seemed to have lost meaning and her longing for a hasty escape from the pain yielded to a discipline of “active waiting.” Full of wisdom, poise, and grace, Kidd’s words will encourage us along our spiritual journey, toward becoming who we truly are.

In a world that's difficult to make sense of, and a season that's so often overtaken by consumerism, here you'll find heart-stirring illustrations and thought-provoking meditations designed to show you the raw, powerfully sacred story of Christmas in a new light.Has the joy of the holiday season become painfully dissonant with the hard edges of life? Do you feel weary from the way Christmas has become a polished, predictable brand? You aren't alone. For too many of us, Christmas has lost its wonder. What if we stopped treating the Christmas story as something that happened a long time ago and started believing that it's a story that's still happening today?From celebrated artist and storyteller Scott Erickson comes Honest Advent, 25 days of illustrations and meditations that will help you rekindle the wonder of this season. Honest Advent creates a space for you to encounter the Incarnate Christ in unexpected places: like a pregnancy announcement in an era of political unrest and empirical bloodshed, the morning sickness of a Middle Eastern teenager, and the shocking biology of birth that goes far beyond the sanitized brand of Christmas as we know it today.Within the pages of Honest Advent, Erickson teaches us the valuable lessons he's learned about: Finding hope and light in the darkest winters What it means to embrace the unexpected How God uses everyday vulnerability to help us understand ourselves, and our faith, betterThrough powerful benedictions, prayers, and questions for honest reflection, you'll discover how the wonder of God-with-Us is still happening today: in your unexpected change of plans, your unaccomplished dreams, your overcrowded lodging, and your humble stories of new beginnings.Praise for Honest Advent:"Scott Erickson's beautifully crafted book helped me see God-with-Us with fresh eyes. Honest Advent is no shallow seasonal gift book; it's an invitation to explore the divine flourishes of everyday human vulnerabilities. A transformative read, regardless of the time of year."--Jonathan Merritt, author of Learning to Speak God from Scratch"Beautiful. Evocative. A wake-up call to the mystery of life."--John Mark Comer, author of The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry

Can God be good when life is not? Rediscover faith in the character, power, and presence of God. Even in the questions. Even in the hurt."I want to believe, I want to have hope, but . . ." Pastor and bestselling author Craig Groeschel hears these words often and has asked them himself. We want to know God, feel his presence, and trust that he hears our prayers, but in the midst of great pain, we may wonder if he really cares about us. Even when we have both hope and hurt, sometimes it's the hurt that shouts the loudest.In Hope in the Dark, Groeschel explores the story of the father who brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus, saying, "I believe! Help my unbelief!" In the man's sincere plea, Jesus heard the tension in the man's battle-scarred heart. He healed not only the boy but the father too, driving out the hopelessness that had overtaken him. He can do the same for us today.As Groeschel shares his pain surrounding the health challenges of his daughter, he acknowledges the questions we may ask in our own deepest pain: "Where was God when I was being abused?" "Why was my child born with a disability?" "Why did the cancer come back?" "Why are all my friends married and I'm alone?"He invites us to wrestle with such questions as we ask God to honor our faith and heal our unbelief. Because in the middle of your profound pain, you long for authentic words of understanding and hope. You long to know that even in overwhelming reality, you can still believe that God is good.Hope in the Dark is also available in Spanish, Esperanza en la Oscuridad.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An empathetic and wise book that will guide you on a journey toward a deeper understanding of self.”—Nedra Glover Tawwab, LCSW, New York Times bestselling author of Set Boundaries, Find PeaceA radically compassionate plan for turning inward and lifting the heaviness that prevents us from healing ourselves and the world, from the New York Times bestselling author of Clarity & Connection“During the years when I had abandoned myself, my mind felt undeniably heavy. I knew I needed to find a clear way to help me feel lighter.”yung pueblo’s path to deep healing began only after years of drug abuse had taken a toll on his mind and body. Searching for a way forward, he found that by honestly examining and addressing the anxieties and fears that he had been running away from, he no longer felt like a stranger inside of his heart and mind. And once he dedicated himself to meditation and trusting his intuition, he started to finally feel mentally lighter, with more love emerging from within. This was not an easy journey, and it's one that he is still on, but it showed him that real healing is possible.In Lighter, yung pueblo demonstrates how we can all move forward in our healing, from learning self-compassion to letting go to becoming emotionally mature. As the heaviness falls away, our minds will finally stop feeling overburdened with tension and we’ll be able to reconnect with the present. And the world around us will hopefully become more inviting in crisp and newly vibrant ways. But these are just the first steps. As we grow stronger and expand our self-awareness, it’s our responsibility—and also part of the healing journey—to take actions to support the health and harmony of all people. The final section of Lighter shows how we can and must contribute to building a world that is no longer structurally harmful but, instead, structurally compassionate.yung pueblo’s hope is that as more of us heal, our actions will become more intentional, our decisions will become more compassionate, our thinking will become clearer, and the future will become brighter.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., the internationally known poet, psychoanalyst, and author of the seminal classic Women Who Run With The Wolves (99 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, translated into eighteen languages, and a bestseller worldwide), touches our lives anew, rendering in the strong and lyrical voice for which she has become known a powerful series of her signature healing stories. These elegantly interlocked tales of loss, survival, and fierce rebirth center around Dr. Estes's uncle, a war-ravaged Hungarian peasant farmer and refugee, a faithful gardener, and a storehouse of stories who was one of the "dancing fools, wise old crows, grumpy sages, and 'almost saints' who made up the old people" in Estés's childhood. Told with graceful simplicity, deep feeling, generous humor, and profound optimism, The Faithful Gardener is, at its captivating core, the story of an open-hearted child who listened well to her old-country elders and who grew up to remember, to bear witness, and, as one of the premier storytellers of our times, to remind readers and listeners of all ages of "that magisterial life force within all things that strengthens us in times of turmoil or transition, that faithful force which can never die."

NATIONAL BESTSELLERA spiritual thought-leader and featured guest on Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday helps us learn to quiet fear and anxiety and discover the powerful wholeness that exists within us all in this inspiring and affirmative guide.Achieving equilibrium in today’s age of anxiety can seem like a near-impossible—even frivolous—task. Panache Desai offers a refreshing, surprisingly unusual approach to meet the challenges of the modern moment and heal the fractured self it produces.For Desai, the soul—whole, unbroken, at peace, and one with the life source—isn’t a destination. It already exists within each of us, just waiting to be revealed. It is not something we have to work to develop—it is our birthright. And when we are in union with our soul, we experience a personal evolution that not only illuminates our individual cosmic purpose but helps us to engage the sense of purpose and presence necessary to remake the world itself.You Are Enough offers a straightforward, non-judgmental, and approachable process of revealing the soul, of coming into alignment and harmony with our true selves. Combining personal narrative, clear and inspiring philosophy, and prescriptive practices, it reveals that the way through is the way in—that the way through fear, self-doubt, and anxiety is accepting and embracing dissonance and emotional and psychological blockages, so that we can approach our lives and the world from a perspective that understands our fears are not who we are. Desai’s goal is simple: to guide readers through radical self-acceptance toward a life of ultimate peace and fulfillment.Beautifully designed, this enlightening volume by a fresh voice shows us that while life may have caused us to forget our power, potential, light, and love, they are always there, just waiting to be discovered.

"A POWERFUL WORK OF SPIRITUALITY AND ANTI-RACISM"—Publishers Weekly"IF YOU READ ONE BOOK IN 2020, MAKE IT THIS ONE."—TricycleFrom much-admired meditation expert Sebene Selassie, You Belong is a call to action, exploring our tangled relationship with belonging, connection, and each otherYou are not separate. You never were. You never will be.We are not separate from each other. But we don’t always believe it, and we certainly don’t always practice it. In fact, we often practice the opposite—disconnection and domination. From unconscious bias to “cancel culture,” denial of our inherent interconnection limits our own freedom.In You Belong, much-admired meditation expert Sebene Selassie reveals that accepting our belonging is the key to facing the many challenges currently impacting our world. Using ancient philosophy, multidisciplinary research, exquisite storytelling, and razor-sharp wit, Selassie leads us in an exploration of all the ways we separate (and thus suffer) and offers a map back to belonging.To belong is to experience joy in any moment: to feel pleasure, dance in public, accept death, forgive what seems unforgivable, and extend kindness to yourself and others. To belong is also to acknowledge injustice, reckon with history, and face our own shadows. Full of practical advice and profound revelations, You Belong makes a winning case for resisting the forces that demand separation and reclaiming the connection—and belonging—that have been ours all along.

“Without a hint of exaggeration,” says Bill Hybels, “the ability to discern divine direction has saved me from a life of sure boredom and self-destruction. God’s well-timed words have redirected my path, rescued me from temptation and re-energized me during some of my deepest moments of despair.” In The Power of a Whisper, vision is cast for what life can look like when God’s followers choose to hear from heaven as they navigate life on earth. Whispers that arbitrate key decisions, nudges that rescue from dark nights of the soul, promptings that spur on growth, urgings that come by way of another person, inspiration that opens once-glazed-over eyes to the terrible plight people face in this world—through firsthand accounts spanning fifty-seven years of life, more than thirty of which have been spent in the trenches of ministry, Hybels promotes passion in Christ-followers' hearts for being wide open to hearing from God, and for getting gutsier about doing exactly what he says to do. For more information go to: www.thewhisperwall.com.

Winner of the Gold Medallion Award and an inspirational best-seller for over twenty years, Where is God When it Hurts? Has been revised and updated by the author to explore the many important issues that have arisen during that time. Sensitive and caring, this unique book discusses pain--physical, emotional, and spiritual--and helps us understand why we suffer from it and how to cope with our own and that of others. Using examples from the Bible as well as the author's personal experiences, this expanded edition speaks to everyone for whom life sometimes doesn't make sense. Philip Yancey can help us discover how to reach out to someone in pain even when we don't know what to say. It shows us how we can learn to accept without blame, anger, or fear that which we cannot understand.

For anyone who longs for a consistent prayer life yet struggles with distractions, doubts, or knowing where to start, bestselling writer and beloved speaker Chrystal Evans Hurst offers a simple and heartfelt method for having meaningful conversations with God, one day at a time.  The kind of intentional, fervent prayer life we'd like to experience often seems intimidating or just out of reach. Chrystal knows how that feels and shares her own relatable journey through the challenges and joys of deepening her prayer life. Showing up to pray just one day at a time, Chrystal found a simple yet powerful practice that made consistent prayer amazingly doable. A warm and encouraging writer, Chrystal shares the same supportive help she found for talking with God specifically and intentionally throughout the day.  With relatable stories and timeless Scripture, The 28-Day Prayer Journey offers three prompts each day to guide you through an easy yet intimate prayer experience. From giving thanks, hearing God, and making requests to simply knowing what to say, Chrystal gives practical explanations and easy steps for the core tenets of prayer, including: Praise and Thanksgiving--offering gratitude to God Repentance--seeking forgiveness from God Asking--presenting your requests to God Yielding--surrendering to God The 28-Day Prayer Journey will strengthen your faith and transform your life with the profound experience of communicating with a loving God. Whether you are new to prayer or well-versed in communication with God, this hopeful and supportive guide will help you experience God's presence in ways you never have before through the practice of meaningful prayer.