Writing first out of despair, but gradually opening to a broader awareness, Tom Madsen captures all the emotion and wonder of a family's journey with cancer, death, and the depths of grief. But they emerge from - or are pulled out of - the morass of grief by their son from the Other Side of the Veil. Tom's son Kevin is the Relentless personality threading through this story. As a boy and a young man, Kevin exults in his physical abilities. He climbs rocks and trees with animal grace and power. He's a formidable athlete, especially on the football and rugby fields. He is strikingly handsome. His physique, chiseled. We follow the Madsens from California to Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Boston, and finally back to California. The boys (Kevin has a brother, Gustavo) grow up speaking English, Portuguese, and Spanish. They spend the boys' formative years in Danville, California, near San Francisco. It is an idyllic family setting. But in December 2014, their idyllic life shatters. Kevin - now sixteen - finds a lump on the back of his left thigh. The diagnosis comes back as Rhabdomyosarcoma, a soft-tissue cancer. So begins a three and a half year battle: surgeries; radiation; chemotherapy. Hair loss. Retching. Life in patches, between remissions and relapses. Kevin exceeds all doctor's predictions, and handles cancer with courage, grace, and composure beyond his years. But the disease is patient, and slowly drains even his immense drive and reserves. He passes in June 2018, just one month shy of his twentieth birthday. But this is where the story really begins... "My wife Marilene and I belong to that club that none of us wants to join, and that I would not wish on anyone: the club of parents who've lost children." says Tom. "No other loss can compare. You're emptied: a shell." "But soon after Kevin passed, we began to receive signs from him. They came in many forms: animals; insects; birds; lights; cell phones acting up; license plates; messages in films; odd encounters. You can dismiss some as coincidence. But as you receive more and more, and as they defy the probabilities of coincidence, as they become more insistent, we were forced to acknowledge them. We thanked Kevin. And we asked for more. We even made specific requests. And Kevin answers most of our requests, and he always seems to answer them with Love, Warmth, and often with humor or with the steely determination he showed in life." "All my life, I believed that our spirits survived death." Tom continues. "The gift that Kevin has given us is that now we know our spirits survive. He has made this abundantly - sometimes even bluntly - clear. So much of Kevin comes across - and so strongly - that we no longer doubt the afterlife at all. And this knowing alters how we think about this life, in a freeing, liberating way." "Through it all, I felt a pull, a role reversal. I morphed from father, teacher, coach, disciplinarian... to pupil, novice, as Kevin taught and revealed more from the other side." "Relentless is the story I wish we had had while Kevin was fighting cancer." Tom concludes. "Had we known then what we know now, we might have handled some things differently, or taken more comfort in the knowledge that - whatever the outcome - he and we would be alright." For everyone who has suffered loss. For everyone who has ever wondered what's there after we die. In short, Relentless is for everyone.

The author explores dozens of scriptural passages from the psalms, offering personal ideas and insights and sharing his testimony that "no matter what the trouble and trial of the day may be, we start and finish with the eternal truth that God is for us."--

OUR DEAR YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOMEN, we have great confidence in you. You are beloved sons and daughters of God and He is mindful of you. You have come to earth at a time of great opportunities and also of great challenges. The standards in this booklet will help you with the important choices you are making now and will yet make in the future. We promise that as you keep the covenants you have made and these standards, you will be blessed with the companionship of the Holy Ghost, your faith and testimony will grow stronger, and you will enjoy increasing happiness.

This is the story of a heros journeyof dark and light, addiction and recovery, life and death and the afterlife. It is a story of sorrow and redemption, the bond between a mother and son, and the legacy of addiction that they heal together after her son crosses to the other side. The Hero in Heroin is Mindy Miralias honest telling of her life as an international businesswoman who constantly strove to be the best parent possible despite her familys constant uprooting from one part of the globe to anothermoves that were demanded by work. And although his childhood was filled with love, by the time her son was fifteen, Micah was hooked on drugs. He eventually succumbed to the lure of deadly heroin. When Micah committed suicide at age 31, his soul was aware that it had not finished its work. Returning to his mother in spirit form, he brought home the heros treasure, working to help her heal and to help society reconnect with the spiritual aspects of the human condition. At a time when our country faces a heroin epidemic, this book will inspire anyone battling with addiction and anyone who has lost a child, no matter what age or cause.

In the tradition of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, a woman finds herself transported to ancient Scotland and to nobleman Fergus, brother of the king. Fergus desperately wants Maggie to stay and create a life with him, but she’s torn. Will she choose her future or his past? A compelling tale of two Scotlands—one modern, one ancient—and the woman who parts the veil between them. The medication that treats Maggie’s seizures leaves her in a haze, but it can’t dull her grief at losing her daughter to the same condition. With her marriage dissolved and her son away at school, Maggie retreats to a cottage below the ruins of Dunadd, once the royal seat of Scotland. But is it fantasy or reality when she awakens in a bustling village within the massive walls of eighth-century Dunadd? In a time and place so strange yet somehow familiar, Maggie is drawn to the striking, somber Fergus, brother of the king and father of Illa, who bears a keen resemblance to Maggie’s late daughter. With each dreamlike journey to the past, Maggie grows closer to Fergus and embraces the possibility of staying in this Dunadd. But with present-day demands calling her back, can Maggie leave behind the Scottish prince who dubs her mo chridhe, my heart?

Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago the Greek thinker Heraclitus supposedly uttered the cryptic words "Phusis kruptesthai philei." How the aphorism, usually translated as "Nature loves to hide," has haunted Western culture ever since is the subject of this engaging study by Pierre Hadot. Taking the allegorical figure of the veiled goddess Isis as a guide, and drawing on the work of both the ancients and later thinkers such as Goethe, Rilke, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger, Hadot traces successive interpretations of Heraclitus' words. Over time, Hadot finds, "Nature loves to hide" has meant that all that lives tends to die; that Nature wraps herself in myths; and (for Heidegger) that Being unveils as it veils itself. Meanwhile the pronouncement has been used to explain everything from the opacity of the natural world to our modern angst. From these kaleidoscopic exegeses and usages emerge two contradictory approaches to nature: the Promethean, or experimental-questing, approach, which embraces technology as a means of tearing the veil from Nature and revealing her secrets; and the Orphic, or contemplative-poetic, approach, according to which such a denuding of Nature is a grave trespass. In place of these two attitudes Hadot proposes one suggested by the Romantic vision of Rousseau, Goethe, and Schelling, who saw in the veiled Isis an allegorical expression of the sublime. "Nature is art and art is nature," Hadot writes, inviting us to embrace Isis and all she represents: art makes us intensely aware of how completely we ourselves are not merely surrounded by nature but also part of nature.