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Gorrell_Braving+Difficult+Decisions_front+cover

By Gorrell, Angela Williams

Braving Difficult Decisions

What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do

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If you are feeling unsettled, unfulfilled, or undone, welcome.

If you are at a crossroads or in crisis and need guidance, this book is for you.

If you have a big transition to make or a tough question to answer, and you are wondering how you are going to figure this out, help is at hand.

Braving Difficult Decisions is a pathbreaking synthesis of spiritual insight and practical wisdom that cuts through the thicket of uncertainty toward a future you can fully embrace. Drawing from her own experience with difficult decisions and in conversation with spiritual leaders, historical figures, and everyday folks, Rev. Dr. Angela Gorrell maps out a process for working through the most challenging aspects of complex choices, listening to God and others, naming emerging possibilities, and choosing a wise way forward that you can return to time and time again as you face new challenges. Angela will help you engage your questions with less anxiety and more interest, wonder, and creativity. As you move, you will learn how to trust God, yourself, and the process.

Angela explains, “My goal is not that you reach the same decisions as me or the other people featured in this book, but that you learn how to take your own journey into and through difficult decisions.”

You are being led, not just by the wisdom of the stories others have lived, but by the God who made the sun and the moon and the stars. You are not forgotten. You are not alone. And you are braver than you think.

THE GRAVITY OF JOY

A story of Being Lost and Found

Wondering if joy is possible, even and especially in suffering?

“My vocation was supposed to be joy, and I was speaking at funerals.”

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Shortly after being hired by Yale University to study joy, Angela Gorrell got word that a close family member had died by suicide. Less than a month later, she lost her father to a fatal opioid addiction and her nephew, only twenty-two years old, to sudden cardiac arrest. The theoretical joy she was researching at Yale suddenly felt shallow and distant—completely unattainable in the fog of grief she now found herself in.

But joy was closer at hand than it seemed. As she began volunteering at a women’s maximum-security prison, she met people who suffered extensively yet still showed a tremendous capacity for joy. Talking with these women, many of whom had struggled with addiction and suicidal thoughts themselves, she realized: “Joy doesn’t obliterate grief. . . . Instead, joy has a mysterious capacity to be felt alongside sorrow and even—sometimes most especially—in the midst of suffering.”

This is the story of Angela’s discovery of an authentic, grounded Christian joy. But even more, it is an invitation for others to seize upon this more resilient joy as a counteragent to the twenty-first-century epidemics of despair, addiction, and suicide—a call to action for communities that yearn to find joy and are willing to “walk together through the shadows” to find it.

Always on

Want guidance for using social media and other technologies in faithful, healthy ways?

2020 Book of the Year Award, Academy of Parish Clergy

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Many of us are “always on”–scrolling through social media, checking email, or searching the web. New media spaces can be sites and instruments of God’s unconditional love, but they can also nurture harmful conditions and become sources of anxiety, jealousy, and despondency. Always On provides useful tools for helping students and congregants understand the world of social media and engage it faithfully, enabling Christian communities to address its use in constructive, pastoral ways. The book includes discussion questions and sample exercises for each chapter.

Reviews

— Mark LabbertonPresident of Fuller Theological Seminary
The Gravity of Joy: “Angela Gorrell’s moving personal experiences and stories in The Gravity of Joy arise amidst the ordinary, exceptional, and anguishing realities of being human. She is a vulnerable and honest guide, who knows her own and others’ tear-stained cheeks, as she and others receive joy with wonder, not triumph; with humility, not presumption; with presence, not power. This book is a witness to hope that can and does save lives.”
— Mark LabbertonPresident of Fuller Theological Seminary
The Gravity of Joy: “Angela Gorrell’s moving personal experiences and stories in The Gravity of Joy arise amidst the ordinary, exceptional, and anguishing realities of being human. She is a vulnerable and honest guide, who knows her own and others’ tear-stained cheeks, as she and others receive joy with wonder, not triumph; with humility, not presumption; with presence, not power. This book is a witness to hope that can and does save lives.”
— Mark LabbertonPresident of Fuller Theological Seminary
The Gravity of Joy: “Angela Gorrell’s moving personal experiences and stories in The Gravity of Joy arise amidst the ordinary, exceptional, and anguishing realities of being human. She is a vulnerable and honest guide, who knows her own and others’ tear-stained cheeks, as she and others receive joy with wonder, not triumph; with humility, not presumption; with presence, not power. This book is a witness to hope that can and does save lives.”
— Andrew RootLuther Seminary; author of The Pastor in a Secular Age
Always On: "This book couldn't be more timely. More and more our lives and identities are being worked out in digital spaces that are always on. So we are asked to be always on, performing and reforming our identities, seeking likes and retweets to confirm our being. What does this mean for formation into the life and death of Jesus Christ? What does it mean for the pastoral task of building community? Gorrell takes up the challenge in Always On. This is an exciting, deep, and well-written project that promises to get you thinking. Dive in!"
— Robert Emmons author of The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns and The Little Book of Gratitude
The Gravity of Joy: “What is the true life? That is the big question that animates this book. Angela Gorrell teaches us that in a well-lived life emotions are felt authentically, choices are embraced meaningfully, and self-transcending connections are forged broadly. These pages crackle with raw honesty, deep wisdom, profound realizations, and potent reminders that ultimately goodness can be found amidst the rancor of daily life. The author’s insights contained within are not ivory tower speculations, either. They were formed and forged through the crucible of living. Suffering is inevitable and inescapable but does not have to have the final say in our lives. Joy is a gift and ‘will always find us,’ writes Gorrell. You will find joy in these pages—may we all be grateful for this deeply moving gift she has given us.”
— Linda LivingstonePresident of Baylor University
The Gravity of Joy: “Angela has a gift for clearly articulating deep, complicated emotions in a way that few writers can. I admire both her gut-level honesty and her thorough reflection. Her poignant storytelling gives readers permission to embrace the messiness of life and reinvigorates our hope in God’s presence through it all.”
— Miroslav Volffrom the foreword
The Gravity of Joy: “For Angela this book is not about Angela, though stories of her experiences figure very prominently in it. It is about the great power of that rather ephemeral but irresistible emotion called joy, an emotion that we cannot manufacture but that we can prepare for and open ourselves toward. . . . That joy, Christ’s joy, is ‘an incredibly powerful counteragent to despair—and even a companion during suffering.’ In a way—a difficult, challenging way—each of the stories of addiction, despair, depression, and death Angela here tells is an invitation to that kind of joy.”
— Tod Bolsingerauthor of Tempered Resilience: How Leaders Are Formed in the Crucible of Change
The Gravity of Joy: “A searingly honest, devastatingly painful, profoundly wise—and beautiful—book. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down. Angela Gorrell is a scholar with the courage of the most authentic memoirist. She generously and unflinchingly brings the theological discussion of the most sublime subject—joy—right into the middle of the mess of life and lets it unfold in surprising and wondrously disrupting ways.”
— Deanna Thompsonauthor of The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World
Always On: "Gorrell offers a compelling Christian vision of the good life within the landscape of new media. She demonstrates that this landscape is neither simply life-negating nor simply life-affirming and that it's possible to nurture a Christian hybrid existence that reflects God's nonviolent and compassionate love for creation today and into the future."
—Craig DetweilerThe Seattle School of Theology & Psychology; author of Selfies: Searching for the Image of God in a Digital Age
Always On: "A timely and important call to focus on who and what matters even amid the distractions that vie for our attention. Rather than merely asking us to turn off our devices, Gorrell invites us to turn on the possibilities of 'hybrid faithful living' and of caring for others across the digital divide. Highly recommended."
— Liz Theoharisco-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A Call for National Revival
The Gravity of Joy: "I encourage all who hunger for justice, peace, acceptance, and comfort to read this book. In its pages you will find beautiful prose and hope that even in the darkest of spaces, places, and times—through addiction, suicide, sudden death, prison, abuse, and despair—love reigns, truth reigns, joy reigns.”
— Publishers Weekly
The Gravity of Joy: “Gorrell’s therapeutic message provides a healing balm that will resonate with any Christian.”
Lisa Miller
Lisa MillerNew York Times bestselling author of The Spiritual Child and The Awakened Brain
Braving Difficult Decisions: “Angela Gorrell offers us a most sacred gift in sharing pathways to listen more closely to the ultimate guidance of G-d. Every decision is a G-dly decision. The most difficult decisions require an even closer listen. Sometimes of course, G-d speaks through fellow people and this is when we need to take to hear the Holy presence in one another. Thank you dear Dr. Gorrell! We all can awaken to the sacred presence who is holding and helping us along.”
Patrick Reyes
Patrick Reyesauthor of The Purpose Gap
Braving Difficult Decisions: “Gorrell took me on one of most important inward journeys of my life. Braving Difficult Decisions is a rare combination of the storytelling style of Anne Lamott and the spiritual guidance of a Thích Nhất Hạnh that inevitably leaves the reader transformed, healed, and lovingly accompanied along the way.”