Hopeful Lament - by Terra McDaniel (Paperback)

About the Book

We've lost the practice of lament. Because most of us don't know how to process our mourning, we are left struggling. Tracing devastating losses and upheavals, Terra McDaniel makes space for the powerful act of crying out before a loving God through provoking reflection questions, embodied practices, and applications for families with kids.

Book Synopsis

ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award

We need to rediscover lament to heal and hope again.

We've lost the practice of lament. Most people don't know how to process personal or communal mourning and insteadstruggle to honor their tears, vulnerability, and the full weight of these disillusioning times. But tending our grief might be exactly what we need to reimagine a way forward.

Tracing her difficult experiences of a catastrophic home fire, a threat to her child's well-being, and other devastating losses and upheavals, Terra McDaniel offers a clear framework for expressing heartache and burdens. McDaniel says, "Lament is surprisingly hopeful. As strange as that may sound now, I promise it's true. It's an act of trust both that we can face pain and survive, and that God cares about our anger, confusion, doubt, grief, and fear. Lament refuses to bury pain or, just as dangerous, to give in to despair."

Hopeful Lament makes space for the powerful act of crying out before a loving God and offers provoking reflection questions, embodied practices, and applications for families with children. Learn how to journey gently through suffering.

Review Quotes

"Terra McDaniel accompanies us into the waters of loss and lament in her book Hopeful Lament. She offers a helpful perspective around how we in Western society have forgotten the healing practice of lamenting. She is a faithful guide for reentering the healing practice of lament through wise and embodied ways to pray and process our sorrows. Terra doesn't shirk from the deep wounds and authentic sorrows of our day. She doesn't offer us a way around them (as if there were one), but sheadvocates lamenting as a way through while holding the hand of our living, loving Christ. One of the uniquely wonderful aspects of this book is Terra's inclusion of practices for families with children. We experience loss together; together we lament, and together we heal."

"Terra McDaniel has laid out a way not around but through grief--a way that is adamantly embodied and Christ centered. Like grief itself, this book will bring both tears and deep intimacy with God if you let it."

About the Author

Terra McDaniel is a spiritual director for adults and children. She spent two decades as a pastor and ministry leader and earned her MDiv at Portland Seminary. McDaniel wrote More Than Ordinary with Doug Sherman and is a regular contributor to the Companioning Center blog. She lives with her husband in Austin, Texas, with her twin grandchildren nearby.