Learning to Be Me Without You is a love story about a diagnosis, one last adventure, a crisis of faith, and a transformed life. With stunning authenticity, Paula Freeman chronicles her journey into widowhood, the club no one wants to join. Yet in the journey, she discovers how God recovers life from loss.
When doctors confirm that Paula’s husband of forty years has an uncurable lung disease, fear and grief overwhelm her, and she begins to journal. This memoir is a vulnerable and sometimes humorous account-in real time-of a terminal illness, a cross-country move, her husband’s untimely death, and an unscripted road to healing during a set-apart season by the sea. It’s a story of God’s faithfulness in the crucible of grief and what can happen when we say yes to his invitation to Follow me . . . I want to recover your life.
This book offers gentle guidance and insight toward personal growth through grief and can also be used as a support group, widows’ ministry, or church group resource.
As with many books in my personal library, I don’t remember where or when I picked up this book (I pick up many at conferences and events), but somehow this ended up on my TBR pile. Though I’m not a widow and I haven’t experienced familial grief, I was curious, so I picked it up.
Freeman’s beautifully written story is heart-breaking but hopeful and rooted in the love and provisions of God. It’s also full of other resources–if her book doesn’t minister to your grief, she references many other books that have helped her through her loss.
As I said, I haven’t experienced a great loss, so I can’t say from personal experience how this memoir ministers to those hurts, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it or pass it along.
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