Losing Susan
Brain Disease, the Priest's Wife, and the God Who Gives and Takes Away
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Story of Brain Disease and the Priest's Wife
This is the story of Susan--a wife, mother, Christian believer, lover of children, writer of stories, and woman of extraordinary intellect. Susan was diagnosed with a brain tumor in her late thirties. Although it was successfully treated, the process led to her slow, unending decline.
In this personal story of love and loss, Victor Lee Austin shares how caring for his wife during her painful struggle with brain cancer and its aftereffects brought him face-to-face with his God and with his faith in unsettling ways. God gave Victor what his heart most desired--marriage to Susan--then God took away what he had given. Yet God never withdrew his presence. Weaving together autobiographical details and profound theological insights, this powerful narrative shows that we are called to turn to God in the face of suffering.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this theologically grounded memoir, Episcopal priest and scholar Austin (Up With Authority) shares the heartbreaking story of his wife's brain cancer and its horrible aftermath. Raw and honest, Austin forces the reader to confront what caring for a terminally ill loved one means the pain, the exhaustion, the guilt, the joy. "It is a joy that wraps around both of us and lifts us up, in the midst of such a mundane human thing as caring for one another's corporeality lifts us up to the heights, to the heart of joy." Throughout his wife's illness, Austin also wrestles with God's role in suffering and death. He contends that God is strange and sometimes awful, that God is love, that God gives generously but also brutally takes things away, and that God intends for each of us to die. Most importantly, he asserts that God is always present, even in our most painful moments. This book will warm readers' hearts and bring them to tears. It is a story of what it really means to promise "for better or for worse" and a must for anyone who has labored along with a loved one through their suffering.
