Embrace the tension of unmet longing and choose hope—even when life doesn’t look like you thought it would.
Maybe you’ve chosen to bury your dreams, denying your desires and sleepwalking through life. Maybe you’ve let your longing take the driver’s seat and now you feel frantic and out of control. Even worse, you find yourself growing cold to God, wondering, If I never get what I want, is God still good? This book tackles that hard question—and many others.
When It Hurts to Hope will show you the middle ground between burying your longings and overindulging them. Rachel Miller offers encouragement and practical advice on how to honor God and honor your desires at the same time, sharing tools for readers to be emotionally and spiritually healthy. Through storytelling, Scripture, and humor, this book will help you choose hope in tough seasons like unwanted singleness, infertility, chronic illness, and career frustrations. Ultimately, Jesus is the only one who can meet every longing. Delayed dreams can deepen our intimacy with God while we hope for the day when he wipes away every tear and heals every heartache.
Rachel Miller is an author and speaker who teaches on faith, creativity, and communication. She works with best-selling authors and speakers to help them craft compelling messages. She has written for Lifeway, YouVersion, Proverbs 31 Ministries, The Daily Wire, and Ramsey Solutions. She is the cofounder of The Writer’s Room—a community of writers that offers annual conferences and gatherings. She and her husband, Jeff, love stand-up comedy, being outside, and planning global adventures from Base Camp, their home in Franklin, Tennessee. Connect with Rachel at rachelmillerauthor.com and on Instagram at @rachel.s.miller.
"Each page of When It Hurts to Hope is a beautiful gift of truth and encouragement—a field guide for living well while waiting and for how to still hope when your dreams may never come true. Hilarious and honest, Rachel speaks into tender topics that are often spiritually bypassed in a way that is both helpful and hopeful. Whatever unmet longing lives in your soul, this book is for you in this season."
—Meredith Boggs, author of The Journey Home
"Rachel addresses the topic of unmet longing with gentleness, kindness, and grace; the kind of grace you crave when you're in a season of waiting. Like a close friend, When It Hurts to Hope will meet you where you are, acknowledge your pain, and empower you to rely on God as you aim to live your life for him."
—Mandy Johnson, writer featured in Proverbs 31 Ministries, Esther Press, and The Fellowship of Christian Athletes
"Rachel does such a beautiful job unpacking an issue we’ve all faced in our lives: how to deal with unmet longing. She navigates this topic with humility and grace, and anyone who reads her words will come away with a deeper understanding of God’s heart for us."
—Rachel Cruze, New York Times best-selling author and personal finance expert
"If you are in a season of wrestling with unmet longings or maybe walking alongside someone who is, When It Hurts to Hope will point you to the One who fulfills our deepest desires to be fully known and fully loved. Filled with love, grace, encouragement, and transparency, the words on these pages allow our sadness and grief to coexist with the gift of experiencing the beauty of true dependence and intimacy with the loving God."
—Kathy Koon, Counseling Pastor at Rolling Hills Community Church
"This book is made for those of us in the in between, with hope deferred, yet somehow desiring to live with joy in the messy middle. Rachel so beautifully addresses the situations many of us find ourselves in during one season or another, giving us words for those lived experiences, and then graciously offering the tools to equip us through the waiting."
—Kelsey Chapman, author of What They Taught Me
"This book will not only help you find hope in the waiting but will also give you practical tools to empower you to walk alongside those hurting with unmet longing."
—Courtney Dyksterhouse, writer and host
"In her extraordinary debut book, Rachel Miller tells the raw, challenging truth about what happens when God doesn’t show up as we hoped and expected he would, and she provides tools for navigating life in the in-between. Miller expertly navigates third-rail topics like unfulfilled longing for love and marriage, the possibility of life without children, chronic pain, and unfulfilled purpose at work without ever falling into either deep cynicism or sanitized theological band-aids. This book is a must-read for anyone struggling with what happens when they’ve done all the right things, but their life looks different than they thought it would. When It Hurts to Hope is a masterful and important book for our time."
—Dr. John Delony, #1 national best-selling author, mental health expert, and host of The Dr. John Delony Show
"One of life’s great agonies is managing the tension between longing, waiting, and not receiving. Through her own journey and powerful prose, Rachel reminds us that God is with us and gives us a full toolbox that we can use to turn our heartache into hope."
—Ken Coleman, #1 national best-selling author of The Proximity Principle, host of The Ken Coleman Show
ISBN 9781684262984
Pages 208
Dimensions (inches) 5.5 x 8.25
Weight (pounds) .5
