Don't expect a long read when you pick up Gracie Shavell's first book, "Beauty Over Ashes: A Memoir of Love."
But do expect a powerful one as the Baton Rouge hospice chaplain and Bethany Church member shares her deeply personal journey from child trauma to her strong faith.
Though concise at a mere 45 pages, "Beauty Over Ashes" packs a punch, beginning with the impactful opening chapter titled "El Nehekumah: The God Who Gives Comfort." Shavell quickly takes readers to that fateful day of March 1996, when her mother suffered what turned out to be a fatal seizure.
Gracie Shavell
That was also the day that young Shavell showed the instincts that now guide her work with hospice patients.
"I vividly remember comforting my older cousins who were in my bedroom awaiting the final verdict of my mother's status," Shavell writes. "I went to them to comfort them. I remember hugging them and telling them that 'Everything is going to be okay.' It was at that moment that four-year-old me acted like a caregiver and the caregiving hasn't ended."
Shavell's road to caregiver wasn't without its challenges and pain.
It wasn't until her early teen years that growing up without a mother caused Shavell to have bitterness, anger and resentment toward God.
More family deaths only compounded her resentment.
"As life began to change for me, the older I became, I battled with how a loving God would allow me to go through such an early age," writes Shavell, a native of Starkville, Mississippi.
Her world grew dark. She became rebellious and suicidal. She explored demonic activities and engaged in "sexual sin." The trauma of losing her mother so young affected her until she was 30, Shavell writes.
However, through school and street ministry work in New Orleans, Shavell found purpose and a relationship with God โ though she had grown up in the church โ that has remained unwavering.
"My surrender to the Lord on December 31, 2009, was only the beginning of my transformation into being a 'new creation in Christ.' The more I surrendered to the Lord, the more my life began to reflect that surrender," Shavell wrote.
She devotes the remainder of the book to sharing her spiritual and professional journeys, including her entry into social work, her studies at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, her work in various ministries and her eventual calling into chaplaincy.
Each of the first seven chapters is titled with a name of God, culminating in Chapter 7: "Yeshua, Lord of My Salvation." Shavell pauses to offer an invitation to salvation for readers searching for hope.
She then closes the book with a wisdom-packed bonus chapter titled, "What I Wish They Would Have Told Me."
An inspiring memoir, "Beauty Over Ashes" reminds readers that God can indeed bring beauty from ashes.
