In the more than 25 years since she co-founded Omega Institute - now the world's largest center for spiritual retreat and personal growth - Elizabeth Lesser has been an intimate witness to the ways in which people weather change and transition. In a beautifully crafted blend of moving stories, humorous insights, practical guidance, and personal memoir, she offers tools to help us make the choice we all face in times of challenge: Will we be broken down and defeated, or broken open and transformed?

Four days after Rick and Karen Santorum welcomed their eighth baby into the world, they were given the devastating news that their little girl, Bella, was going to die. The full story of life with Bella has never been told until now. This inspiring family memoir explores what it means to embrace and celebrate the life of each person and find hope even in the midst of painful challenges.

At the age of 15, Jennifer Rothschild confronted two unshakable realities: Blindness is inevitable...and God is enough. Now this popular author, speaker, and recording artist offers poignant lessons that illuminate a path to freedom and fulfillment. With warmth, humor, and insight, Jennifer shares the guiding principles she walks by - and shows you how to walk forward by faith into God's marvelous light.

It's not what I lost. It's what I've found. I was only 17, just a girl, when God asked me for everything I had...my health, my hopes, my independence, my dreams, my freedom, and my mobility. He took it all. I was so angry with him that I tried to push him away. God relentlessly held me more closely. Looking back, 40 years later, I understand that God has changed and healed me - my heart and my mind - in the most unexpected ways, giving me rubies of his wisdom about an unbending faith and an experience of his mercy I can now tell you about.

The Awakening Heart is a work of love, but at times it took all that I had to write it. I am a private person, so sharing more about myself, especially after being in the public spotlight, was difficult and challenging. Yet, I "knew" that my continuing journey here is not about me. I am to teach others not to fear, but to have hope in God. My commitment to God is sometimes a struggle, however, I can't quit, I won't quit! The Awakening Heart can build your trust and personal relationship with God. And in doing so, it will enhance your life through your own "awakening".

When Alissa Parker lost her daughter Emilie in the Sandy Hook Elementary mass shooting, she started a life-changing journey to answer soul-searching questions about faith, hope, and healing. As she sought for the peace and comfort that could help mend her broken heart, she learned, step by step, how to open her heart to God's grace and will. The story of Alissa and Emilie reminds us that the bonds of love continue beyond this life and that despite tragedy and heartache, we can find strength in our family and our faith.

Katherine and Jay Wolf were a young couple living the dream in Southern California, but all was nearly lost when Katherine suffered a shocking near-fatal brainstem stroke and struggled to find hope in a life that looked nothing like the one they had before.

Pastor Jacob Armstrong exposes the seven dangerous ways that we commonly seek to avoid a breakdown, showing how these seven ways are stealing life from us, and then walks us through a progression of seven Jesus-ways that move us from merely breaking to breaking open. It is these Jesus-ways that get us to the good stuff: a life filled with hope and opportunity.

Despite his deep desire to overcome mental illness and lead others out of their own pain, pastor Andrew Stoecklein died by suicide at the age of 30. In the wake of the tragedy, his widow, Kayla, embarked on a journey to better understand Andrew’s harrowing battle, come alongside those with similar struggles, and help the church overcome the stigma of suicide.

Melissa Zaldivar talks honestly about losing everything that once defined her and how God used unexpected opportunities, like working at Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, to spark a journey of working through her grief and encountering the all-sufficient love of Christ. Weaving inspiring passages of Scripture and insights from Little Women into her personal story, Melissa encourages listeners with her discovery that it’s when we have nothing left to offer that we can receive God’s love the most. And that’s something that can never be lost.

At the age of 31, Betty Eadie died after routine surgery. The events that followed can only be described as the most profound and extensive near-death experience ever recorded. During the time she was clinically dead, Betty was given knowledge of the afterlife that would make even the greatest skeptic think twice. As she traveled through the spiritual realm, she learned more about the laws and history of the universe than perhaps anyone before her.

When Katie Davis Majors moved to Uganda, accidentally founded a booming organization, and later became the mother of 13 girls through the miracle of adoption, she determined to weave her life together with the people she desired to serve. But joy often gave way to sorrow as she invested her heart fully in walking alongside people in the grip of poverty, addiction, desperation, and disease.

In Kate Bowler’s bestselling memoir Everything Happens for a Reason, listeners witnessed the ways she, as a divinity-school professor and young mother, reckoned with a Stage IV cancer diagnosis; in her follow-up memoir, No Cure for Being Human, she unflinchingly and winsomely unpacked the ways that life becomes both hard and beautiful when we abandon certainty and the illusion of control in our lives.

At middle age, John Paine thought he knew what it meant to have a relationship with God. But did he? John's journey into true, mystical intimacy with God began when a neurologist diagnosed him with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, and said, "Go home and get your affairs in order." Seventeen years later, John tells his story, recounting the ways God intervened in his life, freeing him from all that prevented intimacy with God, even as John slipped into pain, paralysis, and further toward death.

When you’re in the midst of suffering, you want answers for the unanswerable, resolutions to the unresolvable. But there is a pathway through this suffering. It’s not easy, but God will use it to lead you toward healing. This path is called lament. In the midst of your darkest times, you will discover that lament leads you back to a place of hope - not because lamenting does anything magical, but because God sings a louder song than suffering ever could, a song of renewal and restoration.

You don't have to keep striving for freedom - instead, you can live in the freedom you already have in Christ. In this audiobook, Rebekah Lyons walks you through her journey of releasing stress, anxiety, and worry to uncover the peace that comes from Jesus Christ. Have you bought into the lie? So many of us do. We measure our worth by what others think of us. We compare and strive, living our lives for the approval of others. Pressure rises, fear and anxiety creep in, and we hustle to keep up.

At the age of 15, Jennifer Rothschild confronted two unshakable realities: Blindness is inevitable...and God is enough. Now this popular author, speaker, and recording artist offers poignant lessons that illuminate a path to freedom and fulfillment. With warmth, humor, and insight, Jennifer shares the guiding principles she walks by - and shows you how to walk forward by faith into God's marvelous light.

When you’re in the midst of suffering, you want answers for the unanswerable, resolutions to the unresolvable. But there is a pathway through this suffering. It’s not easy, but God will use it to lead you toward healing. This path is called lament. In the midst of your darkest times, you will discover that lament leads you back to a place of hope - not because lamenting does anything magical, but because God sings a louder song than suffering ever could, a song of renewal and restoration.

Most of us know what it's like to wait for God to change our circumstances. But whether we're waiting for physical healing, an emotional breakthrough, or better relationships, waiting is something we usually try to avoid. Why? Because waiting is painful and hard. The truth is it's also inevitable. In Still Waiting, Ann Swindell explores the depths of why God wants us to wait by chronicling her own compelling story of waiting for healing from an incurable condition.

Finding grace in the everyday…Kara Tippetts knows the ordinary days of mothering four kids, the joy of watching her children grow . . . and the devastating reality of stage IV cancer. In The Hardest Peace, Kara doesn’t offer answers for when living is hard, but rather she asks us to join her in moving away from fear and control and toward peace and grace. Most of all, she draws us back to the God who is with us in the mundane and the suffering, and who shapes even our unmet expectations and pain into beauty.

Angie Smith was 18 weeks pregnant with her fourth daughter, Audrey Caroline, when doctors discovered conditions leaving Audrey "incompatible with life". Faced with the decision whether to terminate the pregnancy, Angie and her husband chose to carry Audrey for as long as she had life. This began what turned out to be three months of loving and carrying a little girl that was not expected to live more than a few minutes.

He Speaks in the Silence is the story of Diane Comer's search for the kind of intimacy with God every woman longs for. It is a story of trying to be a good girl, of following the rules, of longing for a satisfaction that eludes us. Disappointed with all Diane had been told was supposed to fulfill her, she begged God in desperation to give her more. And he did. But first he took her through a trial so debilitating it almost destroyed what little faith she had. He let her go deaf.

Despite his deep desire to overcome mental illness and lead others out of their own pain, pastor Andrew Stoecklein died by suicide at the age of 30. In the wake of the tragedy, his widow, Kayla, embarked on a journey to better understand Andrew’s harrowing battle, come alongside those with similar struggles, and help the church overcome the stigma of suicide.

When Paula D'Arcy lost her husband and baby in a car crash, she began an inner search for a faith that was stronger than fear. In Gift of the Red Bird she shares her remarkable spiritual adventure. Grief, she shows us, is an ongoing, never-completed process, one that becomes woven into the fabric of the grieving person's spiritual life.

What happens when we die? What is heaven really like? When we arrive, will we know people? What role do angels play in our lives? Can the amazing experiences of everyday people reveal insights into life “on the other side”? Trusted pastor Jim Garlow and experienced journalist Keith Wall believe they can.

For thousands of years, these questions - which span all major spiritual traditions - have served as beacons for spiritual seekers: Who am I? What do I love? How shall I live, knowing I will die? What is my gift to the family of the Earth? As he guides us through these questions, Muller weaves poetry with true stories of love, courage, grief, and transformation in order to show how beauty and wisdom come to us at unexpected times.

Our world is chaotic and often feels dark and devoid of hope. And it’s not just the headlines we see every day. Our relationships are broken. A loved one’s health is failing. We’re disoriented and restless and wrestling with fear. These things are the reality of living in a fallen world. But our God is over that world. He is present in the midst of the daily ache of life. He loves us in the midst of that ache. In a series of 11 letters, Rebecca Reynolds writes to the lonely, the weary, the restless, and afraid and provides perspective and hope to find where God is in the midst of it.

In her new book, Stasi Eldredge meets listeners in their painful realities and offers an invitation to a joy that is defiant in the face of this broken world. This joy does not Pollyannaish-ly ignore life's heartache; rather, it insists that sorrow and loss do not have the final say. This kind of joy is present to both goodness and grief and interprets them in the light of heaven.

The best-selling album has inspired a heart-melting audio book. In Love Story, one of Christian music’s most remarkable singer-songwriters brings to listeners her proven gift for mining the gritty soil of everyday experience and emerging with poignant gems of spiritual insight. Based on the songs of the popular album, Music Inspired by The Story, Dove Award winner Nichole Nordeman takes us inside some of the pivotal moments of the people of Scripture, revealing a very human side that we’ve rarely glimpsed.

Offering miraculous, inspiring stories of lives and circumstances transformed by the Holy Spirit, author and speaker Kim Meeder shows that God isn't calling us to fully understand him; he's calling us to fully trust him. Here she gives practical, everyday ways to pursue him more passionately and to trust him more fiercely. The wild beauty and glory of our God are calling. And in this hallowed, thrilling place, we will see his face reflected in the miraculous - and we will experience the limitless nature of our wild God.