Recovering From Losses in Life

The second book I've finished this year is H. Norman Wright's "Recovering From Losses in Life."
I highly recommend it for everybody.  That may sound strange, but after reading it, I now realize that we all deal with losses in life that may not register as true losses.  It seems that most of us think of losses in terms of the death of a loved one, or a divorce.  But the other losses in our lives can have as much of an impact as the more obvious ones.

The loss of a job.  Or a home.  Health issues resulting in the loss of what we are used to doing.  The loss of a dream.  A friendship severed.  The list goes on and on.

While the information stream bounces around a bit, I still gleaned a lot from it that I can practically apply in my own life, and in my understanding of how to be truly helpful to grieving family and friends.  He's really good at offering "do this, don't do that" guidelines that are illuminating.  And sometimes convicting as I recall things I've said to grieving people.

Something that really hit home for me in my current walk, is that nobody can tell me how I "ought" to feel about a loss, and I can't tell anybody else how they "ought" to feel about theirs.  I feel what I feel.  They feel what they feel.  There's no "ought" about it.  We should be free to feel what we feel and work it through with the Lord.

One of the most beneficial aspects of the book is the encouragement it gives in recognizing some key things: the stages of grieving; what "normal" is for most people; and how to track if you're making progress in recovering from your loss.

Highly, highly recommended.