Unraveling by Elisabeth Klein Corcoran

I haven't read a book this honest and open in a long time. For any Christian who is experiencing divorce, this is a must read. Even if it has been some time since your divorce, reading this book will help you through the continuing healing process.

Elisabeth realizes God's plan is for lasting marriage. She writes, “I believe God allows marriages to end when certain sins are committed.” She doesn't go into detail for her marriage. The details aren't the issue, she says. We each have a story we are living. “What matters is the foundational truth that even in the most heart breaking, soul wrenching divorce, you, and I, can find peace, healing and resurrection.”

She began journaling when the separation started so what Elisabeth writes comes from her painful experiences during the separation and divorce processes. She is very open with her feelings of loneliness, bitterness, helplessness, anger, guilt, and much more. She gave up her ministry position. She wondered if God would ever use her again. She felt like a failure in God's eyes and in her own. Some days she felt like giving up altogether.

She gives the encouragement she found for making it through the divorce, knowing you “can stand on solid ground because the ground is God.” Even when you know you are a mess, realize that God can and will make something beautiful with you. She gives a few pieces of guidance as you walk your children through divorce. She helps you work through your change in identity, no longer living a lie but becoming the person God meant you to be. She helps you learn how not to waste your suffering, how to have hope when reality is not so promising.

Elisabeth had good friends who helped her through her divorce. She came to the point when she realized most of her adult life she had lived a lie, pretending a wonderful Christian marriage. Now she is telling the truth. She also realized she was concerned what others might think. But she learned, “...I really do need to care about only one opinion of me, and that's God's.”

I highly recommend this book for any Christian woman experiencing divorce. The short chapters will give you meat to make it through another day. You'll realize you aren't the only one with those devastating feelings. And you'll also realize God will get you through it. This prayer helped Elisabeth through much: “God, I am precious and honored in your sight. You love me no matter what.”

Elisabeth Klein Corcoran is an author, blogger, speaker and founder of the women's ministry at Christ Community Church's Blackberry Creek Campus for

ten years. With a heart for social justice and outreach to women, she leads international mission trips, organizes women's meetings, and moderates Facebook groups connected with difficult marriages, domestic abuse, and divorce. A regular contributor for websites such as Crosswalk.com and Graceformoms.com, she lives with her two teenagers in Illinois. You can follow her blog and find out more at http://www.elisabethcorcoran.com/

Abingdon Press, 221 pages. Publisher's product page.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher for the purpose of this review.