Michael John Cusick

Companions in the Darkness

Counseling, Grief & Mental Health

“I've lived with bipolar mood disorder for thirty years, so trust me when I say that Companions in the Darkness offers help and healing for those who have lived in the valley of depression. Diana Gruver skillfully frames her own battle with depression around unexpected but real-life stories of saints who trudged through surprising depths of darkness. From Martin Luther to Mother Theresa to Martin Luther King, we see how the many faces of depression can obscure the light and love of God. But most importantly, Gruver shows us why depression and a faith-full life are not incompatible. Discovering these seven saints deepened my sense that I'm never alone in the darkness, that there is always hope, and that there is a well-worn path to follow Jesus in the dark.”

Deeply Loved

Christian Living

“For much of my life I struggled to be loved—to let love in and just receive. How I wish that during those seasons I’d had Bill and Kristi Gaultiere’s newest book, Deeply Loved. Here these trustworthy soul doctors reveal our crucial need for empathy as well as how empathy gets deep down inside of us and can flow from deep within us. Deeply Loved is a guidebook for your soul that is as powerful as it is practical—filled with experiential exercises, reflections, and meditative prayers. Whether you are learning to open your heart to receive love or learning to be more empathic toward others, this book will deeply change you.”

Room of Marvels

Fiction

“Good stories can heal our hearts, but great stories can heal how we see. Room of Marvels is a great story, a story that opened the eyes of my own heart. Once again, James Bryan Smith has helped us see the staggering depth to which God knows and loves us and the length to which he goes to show us that love. Even more, he shows us that the God who looks like Jesus goes out of his way to meet us in our moments of unexplainable pain, then teaches us to play and laugh and love like little children. Make sure you read this one!”

The Deepest Place

Christian Living

“Among the books written on the subject of suffering, The Deepest Place is in an elite class by itself. Thompson’s exegesis of Scripture, clinical wisdom, and scientific understanding of interpersonal neurobiology gives readers the widest possible lens to see that suffering is not something to merely endure. Instead, we learn the essential ingredients for deeply embedded hope to form in the places where it is least likely to be experienced. We learn how to be hospitable to the pain and suffering. We learn that, although there are no guarantees of escaping suffering, we have been given an ancient path to suffer differently, a tried-and-true path upon which we discover in our bones that love has us.”

The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

Marriage, Family & Relationships

“The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex is a life (in the bedroom) changing resource to help couples close the gap between what they hope for from sex and what they actually experience. Written by a bestselling sex expert and her physician husband, this hope-infused, medically savvy book will empower men to love their wives as equal partners in all things amorous, as well as help them understand what’s really going on between the sheets of sexual passion and sexual struggle. Here you’ll find fresh perspective and compelling rationale for why so much of what we’ve been taught about sex is as unhealthy as it is unhelpful. This book may make you mad (when you realize you’ve been misled), but it will bring you joy. It may make you blush, but it will heal your shame. And best of all, it will deepen your marital intimacy at every level—emotional, spiritual, and physical.”

Unseen Existences

“In Unseen Existences, Brian Zahnd directs our eyes beyond the fractious cultural moment to our eternal hope—a hope glimpsed only through the thin veil. Here he names heaven as our true home and country of citizenship; he names our ineffable longing for the transcendent; and like a true shepherd, he names the difficulty of the journey on this side of eternity. All the while, he spares us the sentimentality and sensationalism that so often accompany books about heaven. Once again, Zahnd lands a bull's-eye.”

When Narcissism Comes to Church

Church Leadership & Ministry

“When Narcissism Comes to Church proves what many of us have known for years—that Chuck DeGroat is a skilled surgeon of the soul. His newest book—twenty years in the making—is the definitive 'surgical text' for diagnosing and treating the soul of narcissistic leaders. Layer upon layer, he deftly reveals how narcissism develops, why it's so prevalent in church leadership, and how it traumatizes church communities. The greatest gift of this book, however, is that as DeGroat skillfully exposes the primal wound far below the surface of narcissism, he gently helps each one of us see the pain and wounding in our own soul. Not since Henri Nouwen's classic book The Wounded Healer have I encountered such an essential book on leadership.”