When Gerald Sittser lost his wife, daughter, and mother in a tragic accident, the universal experience of sorrow and loss was brought home in an intensely personal way.  A Grace Disguised is a product of his reflections on loss and the transformation that can occur because of it.  Although the insights in the book grew out of his own experience, they apply to every kind of loss.

Sittser compares loss to terminal illness.  Just as a terminal illness moves inevitably toward death, life inevitably includes loss.  We cannot avoid loss, but we can heal the “sickness of the soul” by responding wisely in the face of loss.  Sittser acknowledges the unique character of each person’s loss and the futility of “comparing” losses.  He emphasizes that it is the response that we make to suffering, and not the loss itself that becomes the “defining moment of our lives.”

Sittser’s book is not a collection of easy answers or pious platitudes.  He does not mean to help anyone “get over” the experience of catastrophic loss.  In fact, he believes that recovery can be “an unrealistic and even harmful expectation, if by recovery we mean resuming the way we lived and felt prior to the loss.”  Instead, this book is “intended to show how it is possible to live in and be enlarged by loss, even as we continue to experience it.”

This is an honest book, full of profound insight and hope.  I recommend it to anyone, especially anyone who has experienced loss and ever asked “Why?”  Sittser does not answer the question, but he shows us more clearly the path we must walk.

- Julie Sharp, CEP Staff