The Gift of One Day: How to Find Hope When Life Gets Hard

The Gift of One Day: How to Find Hope When Life Gets Hard

The Gift of One Day: How to Find Hope When Life Gets Hard

The Gift of One Day: How to Find Hope When Life Gets Hard

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Overview

LOS ANGELES TIMES AND ECPA BESTSELLER • Kerry and Chris Shook’s grandson Jude lived for only one day after he was born. That one day changed the way they live every day. Now they share their lessons of faith and hope.

Jude Samuel Shook lived through only one sunset and one sunrise. Just one rotation of the planet . . . and he went home to be with God. 

Yet the way Jude unwrapped the divine gift of his one day changed the way his grandparents now live every day. A little boy who lived on this earth for just a handful of hard-fought hours caused Kerry and Chris to wonder, How many of our days make a breath of difference to those around us?
 
Their personal journal of loss, longing, and love eventually became known as the Miracle Book, a record of the ways God showed up in the midst of this hard and unexpected heartbreak. From this book, Kerry and Chris have gleaned fourteen life-altering truths, such as:
 
• When Tomorrow Is Too Much, Pray Just for Today, Lord
• You Are Dependent on God for Every Breath
• Hard Isn’t the Opposite of Good
• Fear and Faith Can’t Occupy the Same Space
• There Is a Hidden Gift in Every Hurt
 
These lessons have forever changed the way the Shooks approach each new day. And no matter your current situation, they can do the same for you. 

Join Kerry and Chris Shook on the journey of making every day matter!

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781601427274
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Publication date: 02/08/2022
Pages: 240
Sales rank: 1,075,282
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Kerry Shook and his wife, Chris Shook, are the New York Times bestselling authors of One Month to Live: Thirty Days to a No-Regrets Life. They founded Woodlands Church in Houston, Texas, in 1993, and it has since grown to be one of the largest churches in America. Thousands of people in more than two hundred countries tune in weekly to the Shooks’ televised broadcasts from Woodlands Church. Kerry and Chris have four married children and six grandchildren.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

One Day with Jude

I, Jude, am a slave to Jesus Christ…writing to those loved by God the Father, called and kept safe by Jesus Christ. Relax, everything’s going to be all right; rest, everything’s coming together; open your hearts, love is on the way!

Jude 1:1–2, msg

He was given the gift of one day. One sunset. One sunrise. Just one rotation of the planet before he left it. Unlike the average American, he wasn’t gifted with almost eighty years of life on this earth. He wasn’t granted eighty years or eighty days or even eight days. No, he was given the gift of one day.

However, the way Jude Samuel Shook unwrapped the divine gift of his one day gave us, his grandparents, a gift that has changed the way we now live every day. A little boy who lived on this earth for just a handful of hard-fought hours taught us how to live our years.

Ask us what we remember about that day—that particular twenty-four hours from midday on January 7 to midday on January 8, 2017—and we can tell you absolutely everything.

But here’s the biggest change of all: ask us what we remember about all the days since then, and we can tell you a whole lot more than we could’ve told you about almost every other day in all the years before it. The intense twenty-four hours we lived on that January day, as well as the things that took place leading up to it, have substantially changed how we approach each new day.

One day turned us upside down. And we’ve never gotten over it. We never want to get over it. One day changed the way we now live every day. And we pray our story will do the same for you.

Imagine never facing another day just hoping to get through it. Imagine staying alert all day to its vital importance, even with the onslaught of interruptions and the hypnotic hum of your routine activities. Imagine turning each spare moment into a memory-making encounter for someone you come across. Imagine seeing what’s usually unseen in the people and places all around you, things that are all too easy to overlook but that become surprisingly visible when you’re viewing them through the eyes of faith and hope, grace and courage.

Imagine each day being different. Imagine the dull becoming exciting. Imagine your first thoughts each morning being charged with energizing expectation. Imagine the grocery store cashier going home and telling her husband about this incredible person who said something to her in line today that touched her heart, which hadn’t happened in forever.

Imagine one day holding all that instead of being another ordinary day.

January 8, 2017, was a really, really, really hard day. We’d hate to live it again. We’d hate to think you’d ever need to live it—or anything close to it—just as you’d never wish certain hard days of your own on anyone else.

But something amazing happened. Living through that difficult day refocused our priorities. It altered some habits and attitudes that we’d gradually allowed for our own comfort and protection. It deepened us in places where we preferred living in small-talk safety. It shook up our routines, helping us see our hours as opportunities rather than obligations—as chances to be specific and intentional in our living.

Nothing Surprises God

Jude Samuel.

Jude—meaning “praise.”

Samuel—meaning “the Lord has heard.”

We loved his name from the moment we heard it: “Praise! The Lord has heard.”

Jude Samuel Shook is our third grandchild. He’s positioned right in the middle of Ben, Joanna, Lincoln, and Mary Love. He is no less or more loved, no less or more treasured, no less or more special than any of our other adorable grandkids. It’s just that Jude’s story is unique.

Here, let us introduce you to him.

Josh, our middle son, and his wife, Kelli, announced their first pregnancy to us during early summer. And like any parents whose child is expecting, we celebrated their news with giddy excitement for what it meant to their young family, as well as to our larger one.

In no time, of course, all the routine developments and happenings of prenatal life soon commenced—not routine to Josh and Kelli at the time but routine somehow in spite of the always-miraculous process of childbirth. Once Kelli’s pregnancy reached the twenty-week mark, having had nothing but textbook-perfect medical visits until that point, the two of them went in for her scheduled checkup with the ob-gyn. Kelli had her first full-body scan to obtain a major set of ultrasound images.

The technology involved in these exams has advanced exponentially through the years. But the thrill of seeing your tiny child on the screen, visibly existing there in the womb, invokes the same level of wonder as in any past generation. Every parent can remember what that moment was like, even if the ultrasounds were too garbled and grainy to ascertain exactly what the technician was showing you. Josh and Kelli were over the moon looking forward to it.

But they were on their knees coming out of it.

Nobody—not us, not them, not even the medical staff who’d been providing high-quality care all along—had seen any signs to indicate what our son and his wife were about to face. The analysis of these twenty-week pictures indicated that Jude was missing his entire left kidney, which was bad, of course, though not fatal in itself.

But missing a kidney wasn’t the worst of his problems. The reason this unexpected update was so devastating was that his other kidney—his right kidney—was multicystic and dysplastic. Those are frightening terms that mean his one existing kidney was tumorous (multicystic) as well as enlarged (characterized by dysplasia). It wasn’t functioning and could never function. Once outside Kelli’s body, Jude could not survive with this extreme deficiency.

But not even this was the full extent of concern. The critical condition of his kidneys created other complications that were equally troublesome. Without healthy, functioning kidneys, the amniotic fluid stays below optimal levels. As a result, Jude wasn’t quite as comfortable and protected as he should have been. Worse, he was unable to practice breathing in the amniotic fluid. Kelli’s body would provide for him while he was in the womb, but his lungs wouldn’t be strong enough to sustain him after birth.

As compassionately as possible, the doctor shared the grim news that Jude would not be able to breathe and would probably be stillborn. Within a matter of moments, Josh and Kelli went from their lives being great to being told their son wouldn’t make it.

You can only imagine the heartbreak that followed. Or perhaps you can do more than just imagine it. Maybe you, like us, have experienced the jolt of being plunged from a sunny, expectant outlook to that crushing moment when the room spins, when faces blur. You hear people speaking words that would seem plausible only if they were being said of someone else.

It’s all so incredibly disorienting. Unbelievable.

How could this be? Jude? Not well? Not fine? Not progressing according to plan? He’d been developing so effortlessly, it seemed—growing the same way other babies had before and have since. Sure, Josh and Kelli never expected pregnancy to be easy, completely comfortable, or without inconvenience. But they had every reason to expect the next twenty weeks to progress normally, toward the crib and the cadence of the rocking chair, toward the decorated nursery and the dresser filled with tiny newborn clothes.

Now everything was different? Just like that?

Yes, despite how far-fetched it might have seemed when Josh and Kelli went to sleep the night before, we were facing a life-changing tragedy. Oh, how much different tonight’s bedtime would be. Tonight there wouldn’t be any sleeping at all. For any of us. Our entire family gathered at Josh and Kelli’s house. Sobbing. Praying. Begging for a miracle.

We were totally blindsided by the devastating news. We just never saw it coming. But fortunately, there is One who is never blindsided by anything, and His presence was with us that night. Our son Josh was the first to put into words what God was speaking to all our hearts that night when he said, “It’s good to know that nothing surprises God. We just found out today, but God has known Jude’s condition all along. He’s not surprised by this, and He’s the one writing Jude’s story. So we’ll trust Him.”

Table of Contents

Introduction: One Day with Jude 1

Lesson 1 When Tomorrow Is Too Much, Pray Just for Today, Lord 17

Lesson 2 You're Dependent on God for Every Breath 31

Lesson 3 If You're Never Mistaken for an Angel, You're Doing It Wrong 47

Lesson 4 Hard Isn't the Opposite of Good 69

Lesson 5 Everyone Needs a Miracle Book 83

Lesson 6 Share Your Story … Even If You Don't Know How It Ends 95

Lesson 7 When Nothing Makes Sense, Just Obey 107

Lesson 8 Everyone Needs Help, Including You 121

Lesson 9 Fear and Faith Can't Occupy the Same Space 139

Lesson 10 If You're Still Breathing, It's a Good Day 153

Lesson 11 You Don't Have to Pray. You Get to Pray. 167

Lesson 12 It's So Hard Because the Stakes Are So High 179

Lesson 13 There Is a Hidden Gift in Every Hurt 193

Lesson 14 The Number of Your Days Is Unrelated to the Impact of Your Life 211

Acknowledgments 221

Notes 225

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