Hope for Families of Children With Cancer (You Are Not Alone Book Series). Este artículo no está disponible.Hope for Families of Children With Cancer (You Are Not Alone Book Series)

In "Hope for Families of Children with Cancer" (Snellville, Georgia: Kindred Press, 2008), Lynda T. Young, who has founded children s ministries in hospitals, and Johnnathan Ward, a senior staff chaplain at Children s Healthcare of Atlanta, handle many weighty topics with a light touch. "Hope for Families of Children with Cancer" is practical, down-to-earth and immensely helpful with the questions we face when we face something like cancer. What can you expect next? What will your son or daughter ask you? How can you answer their questions? How can you cope emotionally, physically, and spiritually with this "long and difficult journey"? "Forewarned is forearmed," Young and Ward remind us if your child is given a steroid pulse to kill aggressive cancer cells, you may see "mood swings that make extreme PMS seem normal." They also share excellent advice for parenting both the child battling a deadly disease and the easily-neglected, badly-frightened, healthy-but-probably-embarrassed sibling. They also remind caregivers to care for themselves and to tend to their souls: "Let God join you in the calm and in the chaos." Chaplains serve on the front lines of ecumenical and interfaith work, and this book benefits from Ward s broad experience and broad perspective. Young and Ward write about people of many denominations and faith communities, people of little faith and those of deep piety, nearly all of them people whose faith is tested mightily by the illness of their children. The authors understand that religion can be a tremendous support to those in crisis but also can divide families. The religious content of this book is delivered gently, such as how to get through the holidays by remembering the meaning of Good Friday, Easter, and Thanksgiving while caring for a sick kid: it is worth noting, for example, that the Pilgrims were nearly all weak and sick at the first Thanksgiving feast. Young and Ward tell some great stories about how chaplains work, striving to be compassionate, understanding, non-anxious, and slow to judge. This book can give all clergy a few pointers on how to care for the sick. It brought back memories for me of my first parish, where I regularly visited a teenage girl who was slowly dying of bone cancer. Trying to be a good pastor to a teenager suffering in agony and to the grandparents who cared for her with courage and extraordinary patience was hard, but knowing them was a great blessing. Chaplains often minister to those whose pastor, priest, or rabbi is far away; sometimes they pastor those who will not let their own pastor visit them in the hospital. Ward tells a particularly moving story of one such sixteen-year-old who initially was too angry to let anyone get close to him, but who eventually died confident that "Jesus is in the room and everything s going to be okay" and that angels had started a party to welcome him. "Can t you hear the music?" Tom Goodhue, Executive Direcor, Long Island Council of Churches The Prelude"