Gentle readers, I hope the sweet days of spring are showing you kindness.
In my years of reaching for God and the trials that have come, I’ve retreated to the safe space of books, where I can find another soul wrestling with the same questions and thoughts I have been carrying. If you’re in a season where Psalm 88 echoes your experience, if you have sought the book of Job for answers and tasted ash on your tongue, I hope you’ll find some companions in the books below.
Still by Lauren Winner
“Some days I am not sure if my faith is riddled with doubt or whether, graciously, my doubt is riddled with faith.”
Lauren Winner is best known for her memoir, Girl Meets God, but I have to say I really do enjoy Still. There’s anger, there’s humor, and there’s sorrow at this dissolution of a marriage and God’s simultaneously disappearance. There are many books on finding God, on the moment of conversion, but Winner’s book is about the long, messy middle. The times when it’s hard to pray, the sense that everyone has a path to God that you’ve lost. If you need a companion guide for the long road of faith ahead, this story is a good bet.
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Tables in the Wilderness by Preston Yancey
“But the silence of God can feel like a kind of wilderness, and you’re staggering around begging Water! where there is none to be had.”
When I was desperate to hear God, I stumbled across this treasure of a book. It is an honest reflection of wondering what hearing God is really like. Yancey’s reflection is rich storytelling full of piercing moments and he has this way of both telling the story in real time while reflecting on what he’d do differently. It’s an earnest tale of how painful it can be to seek God, and holding that unfulfilled longing. Sometimes we’re in the wilderness with God and this book is a particular map of Preston’s journey there and beyond.
Forgiving God by Hilary Yancey
“Do you ever know when your beliefs die? Do they tell you ahead of time that they’re going on life support? What are the signs of distress, the signs to call the doctor, the priest, the healer?”
I picked up Forgiving God after pouring over Hilary’s lovely blog, full of earnest questions and the glorious eye of a storyteller. Forgiving God is a story of what happens when God doesn’t answer the prayer the way you were hoping for and you are trying to find your way in relationship to Him. It’s particularly notable if you’re wrestling with disability theology, and it traces the heart leap of a hope and the fall into grief, all while acknowledging God is still good.
My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman
“If God is a salve applied to unbearable psychic wounds, or a dream figure conjured out of memory and mortal terror, or an escape from a life that has become either too appalling or too banal to bear, then I have to admit: it is not working for me.”
Christian Wiman is one of those authors who I either am in full agreement with or I am baffled at what he’s saying. Which maybe is good for a poet. Maybe I should be sort of confounded as I read his work. My Bright Abyss intertwines illness and faith, as illness causes Christian to dive deeper into the reality of faith. It took me months to read as it is utterly rich. I really, really, really appreciate his reflections on God’s absence. It’s nice to know there’s someone out there that relates on how hard it can be to find God sometimes.
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Remember God by Annie F. Downs
“How many times have you been absolutely sure you’ve followed God and heard His voice, and yet—here you are!—in the absolutely wrong place at the wrong time, and nothing makes sense at all. That was me. The whole sermon blew my mind—how sometimes when you’re following God, even doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing can still land you in the wrong spot. Or at least not get you where you wanted to go. And yet sometimes, those are some of the best stories He tells.”
Annie’s Remember God is my favorite book by her by a long shot. If you have been longing for something time and time again, if you are weary of praying the same prayers, this book is a companion. Annie shares honestly the heartache of unanswered prayer and the path to trusting God’s heart in the midst of what you don’t understand.
Hope that these books help you in the trenches of life that always seem to be around the bend ❤️
Signing off,
Gigi
Studying Life with Gigi 