This book by Henri J. M. Nouwen was another raw example of God throwing unexpected reading recommendations at me which were precisely what I needed to read. Looking for another book by Nouwen on discernment, I stumbled across this, and realizing it was a journal he'd kept in the depths of a six-month spiral-dive into depression and only allowed to be published eight years later after realizing his insights gained from the period spent in darkness helped mould much of the spiritual core in his later influential works, decided it was the best place for me (who had not been as far-gone as Henri when writing this but in a pretty grim place most of the past year or three) to get an introduction to the man. "I moved from anguish to freedom, from depression to peace, from despair to hope... All the agony that threatened to destroy my life now seems like the fertile ground for greater trust, stronger hope, and deeper love", he writes on the blurb, and this struck a chord with me on the ways God had already intervened and developed my relationship with him in the danknesses of the period I hope to be starting to emerge from. A deep thinker and profoundly god-hearted feeler here wrestling his way through one of those curveballs our brains can sometimes be wont to throw us; certainly worth a read, especially for Christian readers who struggle with depression, or want better to support others who do.
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