When Prayers Aren't Answered: Opening the Heart and Quieting the Mind in Challenging Times - Softcover

Have you ever asked yourself where to find comfort in a world that seems so fraught with danger, where loss, frustration, and disappointment strike so unpredictably? Do you wonder how you can relate to a God whose power sometimes seems limited or, at least, withheld?

When Prayers Aren't Answered faces these tough questions head-on. John E. Welshons does not ignore suffering; nor does he attempt to put a smiling face on tragic events. While looking directly at life's most challenging experiences, John helps us learn how to work through those trials with honesty, love, and equanimity. Using true-life stories as well as insights gathered from the world's great spiritual traditions, he demonstrates how to use the painful circumstances in life as fuel for our own spiritual journey. In When Prayers Aren't Answered, John gently guides us to a new understanding of prayer and how to best use it to feel spiritually connected, joyful, and peaceful in our modern world.

"The experience of unanswered prayer is a challenge to faith. In this insightful book, John Welshons provides ideas, guidance, and comfort for anyone dealing with this dilemma. I highly recommend it!"
-- Harville Hendrix, PhD, author of Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples

"This beautiful book of grounding wisdom and answers can take your relationship with the Divine to a new and wondrous place and can actually help you celebrate and appreciate times of difficulty and challenge. John Welshons invites you to turn the inevitability of pain into an opportunity for deeper love and fulfillment."
-- Tama J. Kieves, bestselling author of This Time I Dance!: Creating the Work You Love

"When Prayers Aren't Answered is an answer to a prayer -- the prayer we all pray for wisdom, peace, and patience. The book takes you by the hand and leads you into the valley of the shadow of death, but you fear no evil. You feel the presence of a friend -- in this case, John Welshons -- who knows human pain all too well but who is there to help you find a way to love life even in the midst of that pain. We rarely stop to feel and think as deeply as this kind book helps us to, and we rarely gain the foothold in bedrock truth that this book carves out. What a gift this book contains. To unwrap the gift and make it your own, all you have to do is read on."
-- Edward Hallowell, MD, psychiatrist and author of CrazyBusy and Connect

"John Welshons makes us realize that when God seems silent, he is speaking in a language we can understand only by accepting our pain and our life as it comes. This book is a warm, wise companion for the loneliest hours."
-- Lorraine Ash, author of Life Touches Life: A Mother's Story of Stillbirth and Healing

"Wherever there is doubt, there is hope, and wherever there is hope, there is John Welshons. At last, someone gracefully answers a question that has gone unanswered in the lives of so many for much too long. By reminding us of how powerful, loving, and fearless we all are, John helps us to reach one of the magical destinations in life -- a place of peace within ourselves."
-- Scott Chesney, speaker, life coach, and host of Maximizing Life

"Whatever your connection to the divine -- whether it is in the form of a known-to-you Being or just a yearning for something you feel must be out there, you will find in this book insights and suggestions to help you along your way. With quotations drawn from Eastern and Western religions, and stories both from his own life and from people he has counseled, he writes how, in the face of unanswered prayers, we can know God, who is Love, in the wondrous Joy and intuitive Presence that can emerge through our disappointment when prayers aren't answered."
-- Martha Whitmore Hickman, author of Healing After Loss