To Heaven and Back: The True Story of a Doctor's Extraordinary Walk with God


Mary C. Neal - 2011
    Mary Neal's walk with God has been both ordinary and extraordinary, brimming with the gift and privilege of being touched by God in visible and very tangible ways. She is a practicing orthopaedic surgeon, a wife, and a mother who has experienced joy as well as great sorrow and death. She experienced life after death and, despite her scientific training, she believes the answer to each one of these questions is a definitive yes. She drowned on a South American river and went to Heaven. She conversed with angels. She returned to Earth, in part, to tell her story to others and help them find their way back to God. In this book , Dr. Neal shares the captivating details of her life in which she has experienced not just one miracle, but many. Her story is both compelling and thought provoking. Her experiences provide confirmation that miracles still occur, shows how God keeps His promises and why there is sufficient reason to live by faith. Dr. Neal's message is fundamentally one of hope.

Once More We Saw Stars: A Memoir


Jayson Greene - 2019
    She is immediately rushed to the hospital. Once More We Saw Stars begins with this event, leading the reader into the unimaginable.But although it begins with the anguish Jayson and his wife Stacy confront in the wake of their daughter’s trauma and the hours leading up to her death, it quickly becomes a narrative that is as much about hope and healing as it is about grief and loss. Jayson recognizes, even in the very midst of his ordeal, that there will be a life for him beyond it—that if only he can continue moving forward, from one moment to the next, he will survive what seems un-survivable.With raw honesty, deep emotion, and exquisite tenderness, he captures both the fragility of life and absoluteness of death, and most important of all, the unconquerable power of love. This is an unforgettable memoir of courage and transformation—and a book that will change the way you look at the world.

Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved


Kate Bowler - 2018
    She lost thirty pounds, chugged antacid, and visited doctors for three months before she was finally diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.As she navigates the aftermath of her diagnosis, Kate pulls the reader deeply into her life, which is populated with a colorful, often hilarious collection of friends, pastors, parents, and doctors, and shares her laser-sharp reflections on faith, friendship, love, and death. She wonders why suffering makes her feel like a loser and explores the burden of positivity. Trying to relish the time she still has with her son and husband, she realizes she must change her habit of skipping to the end and planning the next move. A historian of the "American prosperity gospel"--the creed of the mega-churches that promises believers a cure for tragedy, if they just want it badly enough--Bowler finds that, in the wake of her diagnosis, she craves these same "outrageous certainties." She wants to know why it's so hard to surrender control over that which you have no control. She contends with the terrifying fact that, even for her husband and child, she is not the lynchpin of existence, and that even without her, life will go on.On the page, Kate Bowler is warm, witty, and ruthless, and, like Paul Kalanithi, one of the talented, courageous few who can articulate the grief she feels as she contemplates her own mortality.

Angels on the Night Shift: Inspirational True Stories from the ER


Robert D. Lesslie - 2012
    In Angels on the Night Shift, the fourth book based on his 30 years' experience in the ER, Dr. Lesslie draws open the curtain on the lives, the dramas, even the loves hidden away behind hospital walls--events that, day and night, reveal nurses, doctors, patients, friends, even strangers to be "angels" in disguise. Hope, beauty, love, warning, and faith all intermingle in these fast-paced stories as readers: •witness belief and trust during tragedy and triumph •observe hearts and motives starkly revealed •catch glimpses of miracles as they unfold •see demands for split-second action •discover life lessons for themselves •gain a window on some of life’s greatest wonders and mysteries as they share intimate joys and struggles of people just like them.

Daring to Hope: Finding God's Goodness in the Broken and the Beautiful


Katie Davis Majors - 2017
    But joy often gave way to sorrow as she invested her heart fully in walking alongside people in the grip of poverty, addiction, desperation, and disease.After unexpected tragedy shook her family, for the first time Katie began to wonder, Is God really good? Does He really love us? When she turned to Him with her questions, God spoke truth to her heart and drew her even deeper into relationship with Him.Daring to Hope is an invitation to cling to the God of the impossible--the God who whispers His love to us in the quiet, in the mundane, when our prayers are not answered the way we want or the miracle doesn't come. It's about a mother discovering the extraordinary strength it takes to be ordinary. It's about choosing faith no matter the circumstance and about encountering God's goodness in the least expected places.Though your heartaches and dreams may take a different shape, you will find your own questions echoed in these pages. You'll be reminded of the gifts of joy in the midst of sorrow. And you'll hear God's whisper: Hold on to hope. I will meet you here.

Choosing to SEE


Mary Beth Chapman - 2010
    Together they began Show Hope, a nonprofit organization dedicated to caring for the world's most vulnerable children by providing financial assistance to families wishing to adopt, as well as increasing awareness of the orphan crisis and funneling resources to orphans domestically and internationally. Mary Beth serves as president of Show Hope and is a speaker for Women of Faith 2010 with her husband. She is also coauthor with Steven of the Shaoey and Dot series of children's picture books. Mary Beth and Steven have six children: Emily, Caleb, Will Franklin, and adopted daughters Shaohannah Hope, Stevey Joy, and Maria Sue, who is now with Jesus. The Chapmans live in Tennessee.www.MaryBethChapman.comEllen Vaughn is a bestselling author and inspirational speaker. Her recent books include It's All About Him with Denise Jackson (wife of Alan Jackson), which debuted at #1 on the New York Times nonfiction list. She is also coauthor with Chuck Colson of Being the Body. In addition to her nonfiction work, Vaughn is an award-winning novelist. She lives in the Washington, D.C., area with her husband, Lee.

Never Stop Walking: A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World


Christina Rickardsson - 2016
    After spending the first seven years of her life with her loving mother in the forest caves outside São Paulo and then on the city streets, where they begged for food, she and her younger brother were suddenly put up for adoption. When one door closed on the only life Christiana had ever known and on the woman who protected her with all her heart, a new one opened.As Christina Rickardsson, she’s raised by caring adoptive parents in Sweden, far from the despairing favelas of her childhood. Accomplished and outwardly “normal,” Christina is also filled with rage over what she’s lost and having to adapt to a new reality while struggling with the traumas of her youth. When her world falls apart again as an adult, Christina returns to Brazil to finally confront her past and unlock the truth of what really happened to Christiana Mara Coelho.A memoir of two selves, Never Stop Walking is the moving story of the profound love between families and one woman’s journey from grief and loss to survival and self-discovery.

Rush of Heaven: One Woman’s Miraculous Encounter with Jesus


Ema McKinley - 2014
    Doctors diagnosed Ema with reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD), an extremely painful trauma-induced disease which led to Ema’s hand and foot deformities, painful sores, insomnia, gastrological distress, curvature of the neck and spine, heart and lung failure, and permanent confinement to a wheelchair.Once an athletic, powerhouse woman with multiple jobs and volunteer positions, Ema became a modern-day Job who lost everything except her faith and desire to trust God more fully. Ema wrestled with pain, anger, and unforgiveness, but now takes the reader on a healing miracle encounter of Biblical proportions.Rush of Heaven will ignite readers’ passion for Jesus and help them walk hand-in-hand with Him through life’s darkness. It will open hearts to embrace the impossible.“Jesus gave me this miracle for you too!” — Ema McKinley

C.S. Lewis: A Life Inspired


Christopher Gordon - 2014
    Lewis, always “Jack” to family and friends, never shied from intellectual debate, and through his written works encouraged others to wrestle with the difficult questions of faith. A master of visual illustration and allegory, Lewis wrote with the intuitive understanding that his readers wrestled with the same questions about the Christian story, about pain, suffering, and notions of Heaven and Hell, as he himself had wrestled. He also understood that others found reason and imagination to be incompatible aspects of an understanding of God and the universe.

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story


Ben Carson - 1992
    Gifted Hands will transplace you into the operating room to witness surgeries that made headlines around the world, and into the private mind of a compassionate, God-fearing physician who lives to help others. In 1987, Dr. Carson gained worldwide recognition for his part in the first successful separation of Siamese twins joined at the back of the head -- an extremely complex and delicate operation that was five months of planning and twenty-two hours of actual surgery, involving a surgical plan that Carson helped initiate. Gifted Hands reveals a man with humility, decency, compassion, courage, and sensitivity who serves as a role model for young people (and everyone else) in need of encouragement to attempt the seemingly impossible and to excel in whatever they attempt. Dr. Carson also describes the key role that his highly intelligent though relatively uneducated mother played in his metamorphosis from an unmotivated ghetto youngster into one of the most respected neurosurgeons in the world.

Through the Eyes of a Lion: Facing Impossible Pain, Finding Incredible Power


Levi Lusko - 2015
    But they never expected that, five days before Christmas, their five-year-old daughter would suddenly go to heaven after an asthma attack. How do you walk out of the ER without your daughter?Through the Eyes of a Lion will help you turn your journey into a “roar story” by guiding you to look past what you can see with the naked eye. Whether you’re currently facing adversity or want to prepare yourself for inevitable hardship, it’s time to look at the adventure of your life through Jesus’ eyes—the eyes of a Lion.

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust


Immaculée Ilibagiza - 2006
    But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans.Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them. It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God. She emerged from her bathroom hideout having discovered the meaning of truly unconditional love—a love so strong she was able seek out and forgive her family’s killers.The triumphant story of this remarkable young woman’s journey through the darkness of genocide will inspire anyone whose life has been touched by fear, suffering, and loss.

The Antelope in the Living Room: The Real Story of Two People Sharing One Life


Melanie Shankle - 2014
    Marriage is simultaneously the biggest blessing and the greatest challenge two people can ever take on. It is the joy of knowing there is someone to share in your joys and sorrows, and the challenge of living with someone who thinks it's a good idea to hang a giant antelope head on your living room wall. In The Antelope in the Living Room, New York Times best-selling author and blogger Melanie Shankle does for marriage what Sparkly Green Earrings did for motherhood--makes us laugh out loud and smile through tears as she shares the holy and the hilarity of that magical and mysterious union called marriage.

Escape


Carolyn Jessop - 2007
    Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn’s heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the next fifteen years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband’s psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his other wives who were locked in a constant battle for supremacy.Carolyn’s every move was dictated by her husband’s whims. He decided where she lived and how her children would be treated. He controlled the money she earned as a school teacher. He chose when they had sex; Carolyn could only refuse—at her peril. For in the FLDS, a wife’s compliance with her husband determined how much status both she and her children held in the family. Carolyn was miserable for years and wanted out, but she knew that if she tried to leave and got caught, her children would be taken away from her. No woman in the country had ever escaped from the FLDS and managed to get her children out, too. But in 2003, Carolyn chose freedom over fear and fled her home with her eight children. She had $20 to her name.Escape exposes a world tantamount to a prison camp, created by religious fanatics who, in the name of God, deprive their followers the right to make choices, force women to be totally subservient to men, and brainwash children in church-run schools. Against this background, Carolyn Jessop’s flight takes on an extraordinary, inspiring power. Not only did she manage a daring escape from a brutal environment, she became the first woman ever granted full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the FLDS. And in 2006, her reports to the Utah attorney general on church abuses formed a crucial part of the case that led to the arrest of their notorious leader, Warren Jeffs.

Jesus, the One and Only


Beth Moore - 2002
    In Jesus, the One and Only, Beth introduces them to an intimate Savior as they get a close-up and personal portrait of the life of Jesus the Messiah.But this is far more than just a work on the life of Christ. As He has done in the past, God uses Beth’s words to woo the reader into a romance with the One and Only. The reader comes to know Christ personally, watching and listening as He breaks up a funeral by raising the dead, confronts conniving religious leaders of His day, teaches on a Galilean hillside, or walks on the waves and calms the storm.