Surviving Chronic Illness: Grace in the Flames

Are you living with chronic illness, or do you know someone who is? You are not alone. The third book in the Survival series, Surviving Chronic Illness: Grace in the Flames explores the many facets of life that can be ravaged by the fires of illness: workplaces, church life, relationships, sanity and even faith. With her trademark humour and brutal honesty, Steph Penny shares the ups and downs of chronic illness through the lens of her lived experience of lupus (also known as ‘the great chameleon’). Steph asks the hard questions of faith—‘How can we follow a God who chooses not to heal us?’—and explores the challenges of living with profound and maddening mystery. Surviving Chronic Illness has a chapter for carers, so if you care for a family member or friend or other loved one, you might find this resonates with you. For those leading a church, this book is chock-full of suggestions for how to make the church more inclusive of those living with chronic illness. Life with chronic illness can be exhausting (as anyone who has lived with chronic illness for more than five minutes knows), as well as traumatic and filled with grief; yet grace awaits us in every twist and turn of illness, even in the midst of the inferno. If you are looking for a book which at once laments and offers hope—if you are tired of trite responses to your physical, mental and spiritual struggles—if unsolicited health advice has you reaching for a sick bag—then Surviving Chronic Illness is for you.