The Unwanted Gift of Grief: A Ministry Approach - Paperback

by Tim P. Van Duivendyk (Author)

Learn how to embrace the painful gift of grief and use it for transformation and healing as you journey through the wilderness to a promised life.

The Unwanted Gift of Grief is a passionate, practical guide through the grieving process for those who have suffered loss--and those who suffer with them. Rather than talking people out of their grief and pain as a way to make them feel better, this unique book invites them into the grief and pain as a way to healing, transformation and hope. Using real and in-depth ministry and counseling conversations, it identifies the journey through grief.

This powerful book is equally valuable as a gift from a minister to a grieving person, as a professional guide for ministers and counselors, and as a training tool for lay ministers and congregation members. Built on the ministry concept of "sojourning," The Unwanted Gift of Grief offers guidelines to be used in helping people in their journey through the adjustment period that follows a loss, a time that may include the darkness of disbelief, frustration, anger, sadness, depression, and healing light as they make their way through the wilderness of grief.

Topics examined in The Unwanted Gift of Grief include:

• grief as gratitude and gift
• how family and culture can affect grieving
• different pathways through grief
• everyone grieves differently
• sudden loss, slow losing, rejection and suicide
• identifying the agony and characteristics of depression
• grief factors that affect marriage and sexuality
• saying "Yes" to death
• factors of faith, science and miracles
• the labor and contractions of dying and death
• the hope for healing and cure
• how to help: the Sojourner's Process Guide
• the Grief Date: A Guide for Couples
• fifty ways to make it through the wilderness
• and much more

The Unwanted Gift of Grief is an essential resource for anyone lost in the wilderness of loss and grief, and for professionals, lay ministers, family, and friends who care for them.

Author Biography

Tim P. VanDuivendyk, DMin, MDiv, BS, is chaplain and assistant vice president of spiritual care and development at Memorial Hermann Healthcare System in Houston, Texas.