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A review by 10_4tina
This Too Shall Last: Finding Grace When Suffering Lingers by K.J. Ramsey
5.0
This is one of the most beautiful and relatable books I have ever read. The words dance artistically around feelings and ideas, illustrating each concept with more depth than words typically hold.
As someone who suffers with chronic pain and autoimmune diseases (and the accompanying medical bills, exhaustion, and strained relationships), I felt so seen and represented through K.J. Ramsey's writing.
If you or someone you love chronically suffers in any form, read this book. It's truly excellent.
I read it slowly because the words are heavy. But there's a lightness too, maybe it's like someone helping to hold the great weight of it all...better yet, it's the reminder that a weight feels less heavy to hold when you're held.
I underlined what felt like half the book because her words so perfectly captured my experience and encouraged my heart. Below are the most resonant and beautiful lines or my reflections on sections of this book that I'm still holding...
We’ve reduced the gospel to rescue...Not grace that fixes our pain, not grace that rescues…grace that sustains
We’ll watch for the Dawn while acknowledging the dark
1
Social connectedness and pain share the same neurobiological pathway - pain that makes us feel less like ourselves is experienced as suffering
Being human is being limited
The desire to be limitless is our original sin
What if self-sufficiency was always a bankrupt lie? And suffering simply demonstrates its poverty?
-We see God’s humanity enter where we want Rescue, relief, and retribution
This is a story where pain propels communion.
4
“I want to wake too, out of the stupor of a body that hurts, out of the soul fatigue of longing, that like embers grounds me in the ashes of my own sadness. I want to want Jesus more than the elimination of pain and the alluring light of my phone so I turn thin pages to the Psalms where I learn to want.”
5
Suffering is not a detour or a delay, but the place where love finds us. Suffering is a place where what feels like absence is actually a safe haven where the truest love is formed. Rather than the place we lose ourselves, suffering is the place we find them.
We are no longer the people we were before suffering started and we long for the freedom we thought we had before things became so hard.
We spend so much of life busying ourselves to avoid feeling empty…we face the terrible mountain of suffering and try to either ascend or descend on our own. Holding the ambiguity of long term suffering feels like death so we try to create our own comfort, our own rescue.
By believing my suffering was somehow special, I set myself up to differentiate myself from others instead of attaching to them. By so wanting a purpose in my pain, I placed distance between myself and Christ’s body. (Here is sin)
Trying to turn clouds into sparkling rain only further divides our hearts from hope that lasts. The cloud of suffering is too thick for our effort. All the effort will leave you empty with the cloud still looming. What will you chase then? Our unique ways of escaping and avoiding suffering are rooted in a self-sufficiency that will never be enough and hallelujah this is good news.
Dan Allender - the desert we must pass through to find wholeness - suffering - it is in the silence of the desert that we hear our dependence on noise. It is in the poverty of the desert that we see clearly our attachments to the trinkets and bobbles that we cling to for security and pleasure…in the desert we trust God or die
Exhausted from pressure and pain…I could easily interpret the misery and mishaps of recent events as a negation of God’s love. Can I hear I am beloved by God here? Can you learn to hear you are loved in the middle of your hardest, darkest, most exhausting nights?
The debt we’ve accrued trying to treat and survive my illness…sometimes I wonder if money is the material in our lives most untouched by the gospel…we hide the last vestiges of individualism’s gospel that we each can secure a life with minimal pain on our own.
The practice of spiritual disciplines places our hands on the reality of the kingdom, allowing our time and space to be intersected by God’s reign and presence.
Courage is not a possession, but a practice. Courage is not the absence of anxiety, but the practice of trusting we are held and loved no matter what. It is facing the present moment with open eyes and willingness to participate in God’s story of making all things new, even when our world is falling apart, our bodies are breaking in terrible ways, and we don’t know how we’ll survive one more hard thing.
acknowledgements
It is a bittersweet honor to learn the courage of repentance alongside you in the crucible of autoimmune disease. Courage is choosing to step into the dark, especially when it is scary, because we know God goes with us. Tenacity is the confidence of courage practiced over time.
Scarcity is a lie and abundance is both our inheritance and our surprising method. We raise our voices in a chorus that is stronger and sweeter because it is shared.
Faith really is a communal fire we stoke together.
As someone who suffers with chronic pain and autoimmune diseases (and the accompanying medical bills, exhaustion, and strained relationships), I felt so seen and represented through K.J. Ramsey's writing.
If you or someone you love chronically suffers in any form, read this book. It's truly excellent.
I read it slowly because the words are heavy. But there's a lightness too, maybe it's like someone helping to hold the great weight of it all...better yet, it's the reminder that a weight feels less heavy to hold when you're held.
I underlined what felt like half the book because her words so perfectly captured my experience and encouraged my heart. Below are the most resonant and beautiful lines or my reflections on sections of this book that I'm still holding...
We’ve reduced the gospel to rescue...Not grace that fixes our pain, not grace that rescues…grace that sustains
We’ll watch for the Dawn while acknowledging the dark
1
Social connectedness and pain share the same neurobiological pathway - pain that makes us feel less like ourselves is experienced as suffering
Being human is being limited
The desire to be limitless is our original sin
What if self-sufficiency was always a bankrupt lie? And suffering simply demonstrates its poverty?
-We see God’s humanity enter where we want Rescue, relief, and retribution
This is a story where pain propels communion.
4
“I want to wake too, out of the stupor of a body that hurts, out of the soul fatigue of longing, that like embers grounds me in the ashes of my own sadness. I want to want Jesus more than the elimination of pain and the alluring light of my phone so I turn thin pages to the Psalms where I learn to want.”
5
Suffering is not a detour or a delay, but the place where love finds us. Suffering is a place where what feels like absence is actually a safe haven where the truest love is formed. Rather than the place we lose ourselves, suffering is the place we find them.
We are no longer the people we were before suffering started and we long for the freedom we thought we had before things became so hard.
We spend so much of life busying ourselves to avoid feeling empty…we face the terrible mountain of suffering and try to either ascend or descend on our own. Holding the ambiguity of long term suffering feels like death so we try to create our own comfort, our own rescue.
By believing my suffering was somehow special, I set myself up to differentiate myself from others instead of attaching to them. By so wanting a purpose in my pain, I placed distance between myself and Christ’s body. (Here is sin)
Trying to turn clouds into sparkling rain only further divides our hearts from hope that lasts. The cloud of suffering is too thick for our effort. All the effort will leave you empty with the cloud still looming. What will you chase then? Our unique ways of escaping and avoiding suffering are rooted in a self-sufficiency that will never be enough and hallelujah this is good news.
Dan Allender - the desert we must pass through to find wholeness - suffering - it is in the silence of the desert that we hear our dependence on noise. It is in the poverty of the desert that we see clearly our attachments to the trinkets and bobbles that we cling to for security and pleasure…in the desert we trust God or die
Exhausted from pressure and pain…I could easily interpret the misery and mishaps of recent events as a negation of God’s love. Can I hear I am beloved by God here? Can you learn to hear you are loved in the middle of your hardest, darkest, most exhausting nights?
The debt we’ve accrued trying to treat and survive my illness…sometimes I wonder if money is the material in our lives most untouched by the gospel…we hide the last vestiges of individualism’s gospel that we each can secure a life with minimal pain on our own.
The practice of spiritual disciplines places our hands on the reality of the kingdom, allowing our time and space to be intersected by God’s reign and presence.
Courage is not a possession, but a practice. Courage is not the absence of anxiety, but the practice of trusting we are held and loved no matter what. It is facing the present moment with open eyes and willingness to participate in God’s story of making all things new, even when our world is falling apart, our bodies are breaking in terrible ways, and we don’t know how we’ll survive one more hard thing.
acknowledgements
It is a bittersweet honor to learn the courage of repentance alongside you in the crucible of autoimmune disease. Courage is choosing to step into the dark, especially when it is scary, because we know God goes with us. Tenacity is the confidence of courage practiced over time.
Scarcity is a lie and abundance is both our inheritance and our surprising method. We raise our voices in a chorus that is stronger and sweeter because it is shared.
Faith really is a communal fire we stoke together.