Inspiration

The word family brings to mind thoughts of joy, sacrifice, affection, hardship, and humor. Yet it is love that defines what it means to be a family, and it is this same love that gives a family their purpose. In bearing witness to the mystery of the love of Christ, the family becomes the domestic sanctuary of the Church. Amazing Grace for Families contains 101 stories of faith, hope, and inspiration. Some are sorrowful, others are humorous, but all will inspire you and your family to grow in love for each other as you fulfill your roles in the domestic church.

In Amazing Grace for Families, you will meet:

Foreword by Shauna Niequist

In the midst of beauty and mess, chaos and monotony, celebrations and mourning, Jerusalem Greer tells her story of finding redemption in what is rather than what could be, by practicing the presence of God through rediscovering ancient contemplative teachings and practices (solitude, study, work, prayer, and service) and pairing them with domestic arts (baking, gardening, sewing). Jerusalem writes with a raw honesty that reassures readers they are not alone in feeling not good enough, not wise enough, not Christian enough to figure out God's plans. Jerusalem is active on Facebook and Pinterest and regularly posts on her blog 'Slow Living in a Fast World' where she records what she calls her "beautymess" attempts at living a sacramental life.

Winner of a 2020 Excellence in Publishing Award from the Association of Catholic Publishers (third place, spirituality).

As a parent, do you struggle with trusting God's will for your life and for those you love? Are you tired and afraid?

In Be Brave in the Scared, Catholic writer Mary Lenaburg shares how the overwhelming demands of caring for her severely disabled daughter ultimately taught her--and can teach you--that trusting in God and accepting his will can lead to profound joy, no matter what challenges you face.

Be Brave in the Scared is an uplifting account of human frailty (and stubbornness) surrendered to faith. Lenaburg tells the heart-rending story of how caring for her severely disabled daughter affected her self-image, marriage, family life, and faith.

Although she initially struggled to accept God's will and her own limitations, Lenaburg ultimately learned how to trust God. She found in that trust inexplicable joy, even during the most difficult days of her life. She writes boldly and authentically about challenges we all encounter, such as trials with control, blame, exhaustion, fear, and acceptance.

Each chapter concludes with an invitation to write and a place for readers to express their thoughts and feelings. Lenaburg's extraordinary story affirms that God's redeeming love never fails and that he is there to help us through all of the challenges we encounter.

Winner of a 2018 Catholic Press Association Award: Sacraments. (First Place).

How can Christians grow spiritually in the midst of our sinfulness? How can we transform our lives in a way that allows us to share in the resurrection of Jesus?

God has already given us the perfect solution--the sacraments.

Whether it is the wound of past hurts, the strain in our relationships, or the stress of daily life, we all need to be comforted and made whole by Christ. In this follow-up to his bestselling Be Healed, Bob Schuchts explains how the sacraments can fuel your emotional and spiritual healing and bring you closer to God.

Based on more than thirty-five years of experience as a therapist and decades spent in parish ministry, Schuchts demonstrates how each of the seven sacraments can be a life-changing encounter with Christ, communicated through the power of the Holy Spirit. He pairs each healing sacrament with one of the seven deadly wounds that emanated from original sin in the Garden of Eden. We perpetuate and deepen those wounds each time we sin, but the sacraments are God's remedy for sin. They give us a way to restore us to wholeness in Christ.

In Be Transformed, You'll discover how each sacrament can help you heal from wounds that can impede your relationships and sense of self-worth. With Schuchts's help, you'll learn how:

Be Transformed offers all of the tools you need for a fresh understanding of the sacraments, including reflection questions, scripture meditations, prayers, and inspiring stories. You'll come away hungry for the sacraments in a way you never knew possible.

What gives you hope? What are your hopes and dreams for yourself, your children, your church, your community, your nation? What sustains that hope and turns those dreams into reality? What are some of the unique ways you bring hope to people in your life? The contributors featured in Beautiful Hope offer intensely personal answers to these questions, and their stories will spark your own exploration of hope and increase its abundance in your life.

Through the years and the struggles, when life seemed more about hurt and loss than hope and mercy, God was positioning the Smiths for something extraordinary-the death and resurrection of their son.

When Joyce Smith's fourteen-year-old son John fell through an icy Missouri lake one winter morning, she and her family had seemingly lost everything. At the hospital, John lay lifeless for more than sixty minutes. But Joyce was not ready to give up on her son. She mustered all her faith and strength into one force and cried out to God in a loud voice to save him.

Miraculously, her son's heart immediately started beating again.

In the coming days, John would defy every expert, every case history, and every scientific prediction. Sixteen days after falling through the ice and being clinically dead for an hour, he walked out of the hospital under his own power, completely healed.

The Impossible is about a profound truth: prayer really does work. God uses it to remind us that He is always with us, and when we combine it with unshakable faith, nothing is impossible.

In these brilliant essays the renowned writer and churchman Fr. George Rutler addresses our current causes of anxiety and our never-changing, ever-new reasons for hope. His writings on the issues of our day are neither pessimistic nor optimistic, because they are infused with the confidence that God grants us his peace and no earthly circumstance can take it away.

With insight and wit, with breadth and depth, Fr. Rutler comments on the confusion in the Church and the chaos in Western societies, which are not without precedent but are on a uniquely global scale. An underlying theme is his dismay at the lack of historical perspective. He says that the gremlin that haunts our times is ignorance and a failure to recall and to understand the trials of the past.

Sooner or later, every thoughtful Christian asks such questions. For everyone ready to make the shift from What do I want for my life? to what does God want for my life? Fr. Gallagher offers this new book to help you make sense of your major life decisions.

Drawing from the timeless methods of Ignatius Loyola and richly illustrated with examples and stories, this book offers practical wisdom for aligning your will to God's will. Fr. Gallagher takes you through each step of the process, including opening your heart to whatever God wants; making use of silence, the Eucharist, Scripture, and spiritual direction; and finding clarity (and what to do when you lack clarity).

While this book focuses on the major decisions such as marriage and career and vocation choices, the insights gained here can be adapted to other significant life decisions as well. Fr. Gallagher's clear style makes this book an important resource for all who want to discover where God is leading them, as well as for spiritual directors, retreat directors, and counselors

Making good decisions are among the most difficult challenges in life. In Discernment: The Art of Choosing Well, readers will find a comprehensive guide to making choices, either individually or in groups. It is based on the time-tested spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the sixteenth-century founder of the Jesuits who developed a systemic way of considering and making choices.

The author, a renowned teacher of Ignatian spirituality, leads readers on a journey of self-reflection, focusing on the process of discernment rather than on the particular problem at hand.

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Through the pain, loss, beauty and redemption in these pages, you'll find freedom in Christ and the courage to embrace your own story. The women of Redbud know the importance of spiritual shelter, and how easy it becomes to feel alone and misunderstood. In the Everbloom collection they offer essays, stories and poetry: intensely personal accounts of transformation, and the journeys to find their own voices. Best of all, they invite you to join them, with writing prompts that encourage a response of honesty, faith and imagination. Accept the invitation: set out on the journey to find your own voice.

Grief touches all of our lives, but it does not have to paralyze us with fear or inaction. God allows suffering because He knows how powerful it can be to our spiritual lives and to helping us fully embrace His love and mercy. In this insightful and practical book, you'll learn how to live a life of redemptive suffering that will draw you through grief into a state of tenacity, meaning, holiness, and joy.

Author Jeannie Ewing is no stranger to suffering. Her family has long struggled with bipolar disorder and depression, and her baby daughter was born with a rare genetic disorder that caused her bones to prematurely fuse together. Despite the many layers of sadness, loss, confusion, and anger, Jeannie responded to God's calling and transformed her life into one with profound purpose and joy.

Combining her training in psychology and counseling with real-life examples, Jeannie will show you that there is much life to be lived in the midst of loss.

Here retreat master, Ignatian trained spiritual director and author Kathleen Beckman offers a guide for a personal or group healing retreat based on Divine Mercy in Scripture and in the lives of the Saints. Beckman skillfully helps us to see how the "rays of divine mercy" heal families, marriages, the sick, poor, suffering, friends, enemies, laity, clergy, our vocations, doubters, believers, those with diabolical suffering, sinners, saints, the unborn, the elderly, children, the Church and the whole world.