As Christians, we are many times spiritually unprepared to say goodbye to people and things without anger or bitterness being directed at God. Life events cause us to say and feel the word goodbye oftentimes prematurely and to continually challenge our spiritual understanding of our relationship with God. The writer of Saying Goodbye is a registered nurse with over 30-years' experience in healthcare. He writes to answer the profound question of 'Why?" The book offers twenty-four "Spiritual Markers" that effectively addresses that question and helps the hurting individual to achieve peace in the midst of life's storms. Saying Goodbye is written to be both instructional and encouraging to families in crisis. During times of tragedy and trouble, we covet peace and question why this painful event has befallen us, praying for the soon return of normality. The author encourages Christian people to allow the Lord to give them the ability to do in the spirit what they cannot do in the flesh, to make decisions utilizing biblical truth and wise counsel, and to be reminded that our God is both sovereign and able. Saying Goodbye is written also for the spiritual first-responders. Pastors, clergy, or chaplains are often present when death, disease, and disappointment touch lives. They are the ones to whom so many look when the phone rings-with the emergency room on the other end of the line. It may be the pastor standing as shepherd when a diagnosis is voiced, when tears flow, when anger or bitterness begin to sprout. Saying Goodbye is written to healthcare professionals as well. It is an educational tool which takes the familiar healthcare challenges faced each day and blends them with biblical truth, arriving at a point of practical theology. The clinical information is general, written primarily for patients and their families. Any basic anatomy and physiology book, or online search, will produce multiple sources affirming the clinical knowledge published within its pages. The more focused purpose is to encourage providers to help patients and families make wise advance decisions and to aid in resolving disappointments without anger and bitterness. In the rush of the professional's day, the author reminds colleagues with empathy of the emotional pain that death, disease, and disappointment bring to families. On every page, the author's heart for his subject shines through, informed by the life events he has experienced-many of them bright and joyful, but others marked by the shadows of tribulation-and, more important, by the way he has chosen to hold those events up to the light of his Heavenly Father's eternal purposes and plans. The writer tells of the unspeakable heartbreak of saying goodbye to a child, to the searing sting of an unexpected job loss, to the sudden passing of a beloved grandfather. Adding depth to his perspective, Jim's vocation and avocation have placed him alongside many others who faced their own wrenching goodbyes. He has embraced the calling of lovingly supporting others in their times of trial, through tears and heartache, in hospital hallways, prison infirmaries, and doctors' waiting rooms.
