God often used autobiographies and biographies as channels of His compassion in the early years of our grief journey. Especially encouraging were stories of people who chose to surrender to God's call when that surrender required sacrifice. Sometimes His call is not a choice, we have to surrender to His plans and learn how to partner with Him in His purposes. The only other option is to walk in bitterness and despair, always resentful and hostile toward His sovereign love.

The Strength of Mercy by Jan Beazely, chronicles the story of one family faced with choosing surrender to God's call when doing so required faith beyond anything they had ever experienced. I hope Laura's review will whet your appetite for this book as well as encourage you to believe that God is sovereign and you can trust Him, even if that choice requires enormous courage and strength.

This autobiography is a walk with the Beazely family on their journey toward God's calling in their lives. The struggle is one that every parent faces: entrusting our children to God. Jan Beazely's fears seem legitimate as she and her husband watch their eighteen year old daughter, Heather, board a plane to a country recently torn apart by revolution. Young Heather seems sure of the Lord's calling to go to Romania and help the children left behind by the war; to be a light in the darkness. The Beazely's are left trusting God with their daughter's life. But isn't it amazing how the God of wonders is at work in the smallest details of our every day lives, moving us and calling us to Him and His great eternal work? The things that seem ordinary, and even mundane, are working together in the greater plan of the God of the universe. For the Beazely family, the call was there from the beginning and we the reader get to watch the as the stitches come together, like a petite needlepoint masterpiece, on the spiritual journey that leads them to adoption and then to a ministry that would change the lives of many other children without hope around the world.

No matter what your life's calling, no matter the ministry God has set in your heart, this story is a reminder that true ministry is not found in the response of our emotions - it is not even found in accomplishments, what the world would call results - but rather it is found in our humble obedience to the Lord.

I also encourage you to visit the website of Griefshare where you will find more articles on Surviving the Holidays. This is one of the best sites I have found for grieving families: http://www.griefshare.org/holidays/#articles

In His Grip,
Sharon