During the holidays, so many of us can suffer for all kinds of reasons. The magnitude of our weary world weighs on our hearts and minds. We wrestle with chronic pain, broken relationships, shattered dreams, fragile faith, and unexpected losses. Our grief and sorrow feel particularly acute when compared to the festivity and joy everyone else seems to be feeling. More and more churches are acknowledging this fact with "Blue Christmas" services (also called “Longest Night” services) and offering resources to give particular support and comfort to those struggling during the “most wonderful time of the year.” Kathy Escobar has been leading Blue Christmas experiences at her church for nearly a decade and just experienced her bluest season of all following the sudden death of her son. In A Weary World, Escobar provides twenty-eight daily reflections paired with prayers and practices to honor our struggles during the holidays. Weekly resources make this Advent devotional suitable for group study as well.

“The world is broken. I am broken. And my need is dire.” This stark revelation is the path to divine surrender. Our courage has a chance to flourish when we reach a point where we have no control and nothing to lose. In a series of letters, Rebecca Reynolds uses imagery to breathe truth to the lonely, the weary, the restless, and afraid. If you feel the ache of brokenness, you will be refreshed by the source of all courage illuminated in these pages. God is available and wants to join you, in the midst of any mess. You can take heart. As Aslan of Narnia whispered (and only Lucy heard), Courage, dear heart.

Despite your best efforts, are you feeling weary and overwhelmed this Christmas season? The Weary World Still Rejoices is a devotional for anyone struggling to connect with Jesus this Christmas season. With 25 independent readings and follow-up questions, you can either follow along each day of December, or jump in whatever days you are able. Each reading will take you deeper into the story of Jesus' first coming, while highlighting His future second coming. The questions at the end of each reading will help you examine your own walk with God and encourage you with His grace and love.

Experience the Christmas season anew this year with this 5-session study on Advent, why we celebrate it, and how it fuels our worship of Jesus. Understand the anticipation and waiting the Old Testament world endured. And experience the joy of new life signaled by the coming of Christ, and the way Advent points to the glory of God still to come. First released in 2019, this study is expanded with tools for Scripture memory to help you savor this Advent season. Features: Beautiful, full-color designed pages to ready participants for the Christmas season Personal study segments to complete between 5 weeks of group sessions Weekly activities for adults, teens, and kids Tips to guide discussion within small groups Benefits: Fuel your worship of Christ with a deeper understanding of Advent Grasp God's character and His work on behalf of His people, in the past and present, as a catalyst to a more intimate relationship with Him Learn how to practically extend joy, hope, peace, and love to others during the holiday season

Are You Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired? Jesus did not intend for us to struggle with weariness or defeat. Weariness is nothing more than an attack from Satan to sidetrack you and keep you from fulfilling God's amazing plan for your life. In today's busy world you may become exhausted from doing so many good things God didn't ask you to do that you miss doing the things God intended! God promises us strength in His Word, and He has provided a way to get it! In Weary Warriors, Fainting Saints, bestselling author Joyce Meyer exposes the tactics Satan uses to cause weariness and reveals how to avoid these snares. She explains how to find real rest by trusting God for the future. When you learn how God operates, you will know how to co-operate with His divine plan. You can find strength, power, peace, and refreshment-and stop being a weary warrior or a fainting saint!

We live in an age uniquely attentive to the problem of mental illness. More than half of us will be diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder at some point in our lifetime. It has been easy, for centuries, to relegate persistent emotional and mental struggles entirely to the realm of a failed personal work ethic ("Just don't worry so much!"), not enough faith ("Just pray harder!"), or, in recent years, a chemical imbalance in our brains ("Just take this pill!"). Yet, for those of us who live with mental illness, none of these suggestions provides the quick relief it promises, and the continued struggle takes its toll on our already burdened hearts and minds. In All Who Are Weary, Emmy Kegler joins the reader on the long walk of reflection, understanding, and compassion, calling followers of Jesus back to ancient practices of lament, vulnerability, honesty, community, and hope. This book is not a map to a cure, nor a perfectly restorative prayer. Written with a wide community in mind--patients, but also parents and partners, coworkers and friends, pastors and therapists, and the whole church--All Who Are Weary points to the embodied grace known in Jesus, trusting in the promise of a lighter load for all.

As seen in military documents, medical journals, novels, films, television shows, and memoirs, soldiers’ invisible wounds are not innate cracks in individual psyches that break under the stress of war. Instead, the generation of weary warriors is caught up in wider social and political networks and institutions—families, activist groups, government bureaucracies, welfare state programs—mediated through a military hierarchy, psychiatry rooted in mind-body sciences, and various cultural constructs of masculinity. This book offers a history of military psychiatry from the American Civil War to the latest Afghanistan conflict. The authors trace the effects of power and knowledge in relation to the emotional and psychological trauma that shapes soldiers’ bodies, minds, and souls, developing an extensive account of the emergence, diagnosis, and treatment of soldiers’ invisible wounds.

A lush, gripping, psychologically complex novel that asks: How much do siblings owe one another? At the edge of a woods, on the grounds of a defunct “free school,” Ava and her brother, Fred, share a dreamy and seemingly idyllic childhood—a world defined largely by their imaginations, a celebration of curiosity and the natural environment, and each other’s presence. Their parents, progressive educators, believe passionately that children develop best without formal instruction or societal constraint. Everyone is aware of Fred’s oddness—the word “autism” is whispered—but his parents’ fierce disapproval of labels keeps him free of clinical evaluation, diagnosis, or intervention, and constantly at Ava’s side. Decades later, Fred is arrested for a shocking crime, and Ava is frantic to piece together the story of what actually happened. A boy is dead. Fred is held in a county jail. But could he really have done what he’s accused of? By now their parents are long gone, and the siblings have fallen out of touch, which causes Ava considerable guilt. Who is left to reach Fred? To explain him and his innocence to the world? Convinced that she alone can ensure he is regarded with sympathy, Ava tells their enthralling story. A writer of enormous craft, Leah Hager Cohen brings her trademark intelligence and storytelling to a psychologically gripping, richly ambiguous novel that suggests we may ultimately understand one another best not with facts alone, but through our imaginations.

A World Weary Woman is one whose characteristic response to stress is to struggle to achieve ambitious goals. To achieve means to succeed at something that is recognized and rewarded by the collective. However, she feels little joy in the process, suffering a disconnection from her feminine body wisdom and her creativity. Her task is to find a way of living authentically that allows her to express what awakens her heart. Many Type A women are World Weary. They are seekers. It is this soulful quest for further development that informs their progression. World Weary Women is not content to live mechanically. The provisional life exhausts her and she knows it. She must detach from who she has been, in order to discover who she is meant to be.