Author: David & Nancy Guthrie
Located in: Nashville, TN
Submitted: August 28, 2008
Tell us a little about yourself. We have experienced the loss of two of our childrena daughter, Hope, and a son, Gabriel, and we have an 18-year-old son, Matt. Nancy has also written Holding on to Hope and The One Year Book of Hope, and we are hosts of the Griefshare video curriculum that is used in grief groups in 6,000 churches.
What was your motivation behind this project? Over the past ten years we've talked to hundreds of grieving people and families. We know what the issues arethe pressure it puts on your marriage, the challenges in helping children through grief, the impact it has on your faith, the awkwardness of being sad. We wanted to share some of what we've learned as well as the wisdom and insight of other ordinary people and experts to help other families through this process.
What do you hope folks will gain from this project? We wanted to create a resource that included both the husbands and wifes perspective because we realize that one of the greatest challenges to grieving families is the differing ways in which family members experience and express their grief. It seems most grief books are read by women who then hand them to their husbands who dont want to read them. So we felt that hearing from both of us, and showing how we experienced and process our grief differently, will be a help to couples who find themselves struggling to understand and relate to their spouses grief.
How were you personally impacted by working on this project? We learned a lot through interviewing going through grief different from our own and experts in psychology, parenting and counseling. While the people we interviewed were candid about their own experiences of desperation and disappointment in the loss of their loved ones, it was encouraging to hear so many of them relate how God has brought healing and wholeness into their lives and their families, and how theyve seen Him use their loss for good. We hope our readers will be deeply encouraged by these testimonies of hope, and will be able to believe that as they work through their loss as a family, life can be good again.
Anything else you'd like readers / listeners to know: While Nancy has written and spoken a great deal on our experience, we loved getting to work on this project together. It will add to our joy to hear from people who have been helped by it. You can contact us through our website.
