Dan B. Allender - Redeeming Heartache: How Past Suffering Reveals Our True Calling

Rich and profound, compassionate and realistic. But mostly redemptive. Dan and Cathy have offered up a very important book. Honestly. Im looking forward to my second read-through!

J OHN E LDREDGE

Redeeming Heartache is a gift to a wounded worldbeautifully written, emotionally powerful, vulnerable and transparent, filled with wisdom. Dan Allender and Cathy Loerzel help us understand trauma and suffering through stories and studies, with sensitivity and sophistication, through the prism of faith. Somewhere in this book you will find some part of your own story, something that rings true to your experience. Youll also find comfort in knowing youre not alone and that suffering can be redeemed by love, in community, through wise counsel. Everyone who reads Redeeming Heartache will be better for having done so. You will achieve greater understanding of yourself and others and find hope, healing, and joy in the journey.

P ETER W EHNER , senior fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center; contributing opinion writer, The New York Times; contributing writer, The Atlantic; former White House senior adviser

Dr. Dan Allender and Cathy Loerzel invite us to courageously grapple with the pain, suffering, and trauma we all experience east of Edenliving outside of the perfection and wholeness that characterized humanitys first homeand identify our fear, shame, and grief. Dan and Cathy insist there is a way to metabolize the heartache, allowing it to be the means by which we become a beautiful blessing in our world, a living testament to the redemption and goodness yet to come.

K AY W ARREN , cofounder, Saddleback Church

In a world in which our imaginations are depleted and barren from the infinite array of traumas we perpetrate against each other and the creation, we desperately need voices that can reawaken us to hope and to the action that will embody it. Redeeming Heartache delivers to us that very hope-in-action that we so desperately need. With unflinching honesty and boundless kindness, Dan Allender and Cathy Loerzel have provided the metaphors and meaning that will, should we embrace them, allow God to find us, heal us, convict us, and recommission us to join him in cocreating the beauty he has destined for us to become.

C URT T HOMPSON , MD, author, The Soul of Shame and Anatomy of the Soul

Redeeming Heartache is for everyone who has experienced trauma in their lives. In other words, this book is a must-read for everyone. Not that everyone has experienced the same level of trauma, but since we live in a fallen world, we have both suffered and caused others to suffer. Allender and Loerzel know trauma, not only experientially but also as an object of their close study. Deeply biblical, they also appropriately bring insight from their work as wise counselors as well as their research into brain function. Thank you, Dan and Cathy, for this important book.

T REMPER L ONGMAN III, PhD, Distinguished Scholar and Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, Westmont College

Even if I hadnt logged forty-five years of friendship, redemption, and healing with Dan, I would wholeheartedly recommend his and Cathys new book, Redeeming Heartache. They show us how Gods grace comes to us in traumas and losses, and heart-walks us into a lifestyle of wisdom, redemptive presence, and servant love. Our suffering is to be stewarded, not despised, denied, or dodged. On a personal notedecades before the fresh insights in this remarkable book came together, Dan was demonstrating them to me. No one has been more used by God in my life for the redeeming of my heartaches, and for helping me understand my calling, than Dan. Thank you, dear friend.

S COTTY S MITH , pastor emeritus, Christ Community Church, Franklin, TN; teacher in residence, West End Community Church, Nashville, TN

What if the harm we have experienced could give us clues to our calling in lifeto what we are meant to do with our lives and who we are meant to become? In Redeeming Heartache, Allender and Loerzel help us link past harm with present calling. This book is as honest about the reality of pain in this life as it is hopeful about the possibility of healing in the land of the living. You will not only be invited to engage your own story more deeply but also be given a framework and the tools for doing this crucial labor.

A DAM Y OUNG , host, The Places We Find Ourselves podcast; therapist

Until a bridge is constructed between the past and the present, we are bound to repeat the past without recognizing the real war we are fighting. Dan Allender and Cathy Loerzel have an uncanny ability to integrate theology and psychology to help us to see how we navigate our trauma. Trauma is not something we just get over. It lingers in our bodies and hearts, but we can be liberated to be whole, healed, and forgiven persons.

J IMMY M C G EE , CEO/president, The Impact Movement, Inc.

In my intent as a leader to charge forward with a limp in a war to restore shalom to this fractured world, Dan and Cathy have given me hope that my suffering can truly have purpose. In the same way that I have reread Dans book Leading with a Limp every year for the last decade, I will be returning to this book over and over again. It has been a true gift to this weary soul. This is truly a beautiful book.

C HRIS S EAY , founder and lead pastor, Ecclesia Houston

Every single person has a story of heartache. While we tend to accept that these stories wound us, we dont always know how trauma shapes the quality of our life and relationships. Dan Allender and Cathy Loerzel are pioneers who have joined to give us this life-altering book. Blending honesty, biblical wisdom, and brilliant guidance, Dan and Cathy offer a framework for understanding how unresolved pain shapes our fears and can cultivate our deepest desires. Redeeming Heartache is a watershed book written to all of us who seek truer, fuller answers.

J AY S TRINGER , psychotherapist; author, Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing

ZONDERVAN BOOKS

Redeeming Heartache

Copyright 2021 by Dan B. Allender and Cathy Loerzel

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

Zondervan titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please email SpecialMarkets@Zondervan.com.

ISBN 978-0-310-36203-6 (audio)

Epub Edition July 2021 9780310362029

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Allender, Dan B., author. | Loerzel, Cathy, 1979- author.

Title: Redeeming heartache : how past suffering reveals our true calling / Dr. Dan B. Allender, Cathy Loerzel, M.A.

Description: Grand Rapids : Zondervan, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: In this book, renowned psychologist Dr. Dan Allender and counselor Cathy Loerzel present a biblically trustworthy and transformational method for healing from painful memories and emotional trauma, stepping into true freedom, and discovering that your wounds are unlikely guides to inner strength and joyProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021021239 (print) | LCCN 2021021240 (ebook) | ISBN 9780310362012 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780310362029 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Psychic traumaReligious aspectsChristianity. | Crisis managementReligious aspectsChristianity.