#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER What do you do when God’s timing seems questionable, his lack of intervention hurtful, and his promises doubtful? Lysa TerKeurst unveils her heart amid shattering circumstances, inviting you to live assured when life doesn't turn out like you expected. Life often looks so very different than we hoped or expected. Some events may simply catch us off guard for a season, but others shatter us completely. We feel disappointed and disillusioned at best and overwhelmed and hopeless at worst. We quietly start to wonder about the reality of God’s goodness and why he allows us to suffer and experience grief and loss. Lysa TerKeurst understands this deeply. But after many tears, godly counseling, and prayerful seeking, she's also discovered that our disappointments can be the divine appointments our souls need to radically encounter God. In It's Not Supposed to Be This Way, Lysa invites us into her own journey of faith and, with grit, vulnerability, and honest humor, helps us to: Stop being pulled into the anxiety of disappointment by discovering how to better process unmet expectations and other painful situations. Train ourselves to recognize the three strategies of the enemy, so we can stand strong and persevere through unsettling relationships and uncertain outcomes. Discover the secret of being steadfast and not panicking when God actually does give us more than we can handle. Shift our suspicion that God is cruel or unfair to the biblical assurance that God is protecting and preparing us. Know how to encourage a friend and help her navigate hard realities with real help from God's truth, the Bible. Look for additional biblically based resources and devotionals from Lysa: Good Boundaries and Goodbyes Forgiving What You Can't Forget Uninvited You're Going to Make It Embraced Seeing Beautiful Again

In a time of climate change and mass extinction, how we garden matters more than ever: “An outstanding and deeply passionate book.” —Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals Plenty of books tell home gardeners and professional landscape designers how to garden sustainably, what plants to use, and what resources to explore. Yet few examine why our urban wildlife gardens matter so much—not just for ourselves, but for the larger human and animal communities. Our landscapes push aside wildlife and in turn diminish our genetically programmed love for wildness. How can we get ourselves back into balance through gardens, to speak life's language and learn from other species? Benjamin Vogt addresses why we need a new garden ethic, and why we urgently need wildness in our daily lives—lives sequestered in buildings surrounded by monocultures of lawn and concrete that significantly harm our physical and mental health. He examines the psychological issues around climate change and mass extinction as a way to understand how we are short-circuiting our response to global crises, especially by not growing native plants in our gardens. Simply put, environmentalism is not political; it's social justice for all species marginalized today and for those facing extinction tomorrow. By thinking deeply and honestly about our built landscapes, we can create a compassionate activism that connects us more profoundly to nature and to one another.

With wit and wisdom, an Oxford historian and Financial Times gardening columnist recounts his deep passion and appreciation for gardening.

Restorative gardens for the sick, which were a vital part of the healing process from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century, provided ordered and beautiful settings in which patients could begin to heal, both physically and mentally. In this engaging book, a landscape architect, a physician, and a historian examine the history and role of restorative gardens to show why it is important to again integrate nature into the institutional--and largely factorylike--settings of modern health care facilities. In this unique book, Nancy Gerlach-Spriggs, Dr. Richard Enoch Kaufman, and Sam Bass Warner, Jr., unfold their argument by presenting the history of restorative gardens and studies of six American health care centers that cherish the role of their gardens in the therapeutic process. These institutions are examined in detail: community hospitals in Wausau, Wisconsin, and Monterey, California; a full-care mental institution in Philadelphia; a nursing home in Queens; a facility for rehabilitative medicine in New York City; and a hospice in Houston. In their comprehensive review the authors suggest that contemporary scientific understanding clearly recognizes the beneficial physiological effects of garden environments on patients’ well-being. The book ends with a plea to make gardens--rather than the shopping mall atria so often seen in newly renovated hospitals--a vital part of the medical milieu.

Gardening on rooftops, balconies, and terraces is a popular trend. After thirty-five years of experience, Susan Brownmiller writes with honesty and humor about her oasis twenty floors above a Manhattan street. She reports the catastrophes: losing daytime access during building-wide renovations; assaults from a mockingbird during his mating season. And the joys: a peach tree fruited for fifteen years; the windswept birches lasted for twenty-five. Butterflies and bees pay annual visits. She pampers a buddleia, a honeysuckle, roses, hydrangeas, and more. Her adventures celebrate the tenacity of nature, inviting readers to marvel at her garden’s resilience, and her own. Enhanced by over thirty color photographs, this passionate account of green life in a gritty, urban environment will appeal to readers and gardeners wherever they dwell.

A collection of poems evoking the world and feelings of childhood.