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    Sparrow: A Journey of Grace and Miracles While Battling ALS
    Sparrow: A Journey of Grace and Miracles While Battling ALS
    Sparrow: A Journey of Grace and Miracles While Battling ALS
    Ebook114 pages1 hour

    Sparrow: A Journey of Grace and Miracles While Battling ALS

    By Jennifer R. Durant and Matthew P. Durant

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    About this ebook

    Jennifer R. Durant, busy career woman, wife, and mom of two, made a drastic career change. In the lexicon of ministry, God called her to be an Episcopal priest, and Jennifer answered. Several years later, in the final weeks of seminary, Durant's world changed dramatically again, when the persistent weakness in one of her hands was diagnosed as ALS (aka Lou Gehrig's disease).

    In Sparrow, completed with her husband, Matthew, Durant recounts her battle and brings the reader with her on her spiritual journey through her priesthood and ministry which, despite her illness, continued to her death—with the aid of a speech box, she preached her final sermon on the Sunday before her death. Durant leads readers forward through the confusion of our caffeine-fueled and perpetually exhausted world to discover, as she did, a renewing sense of God-given purpose and sacred light which even the darkest of circumstances cannot extinguish, a place where even in silence, God is present, whispering through us.

    An inspiration to any who suffer from a debilitating disease (or know someone who does) and those who provide pastoral care to others. It is a story of God's redemption and new life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMorehouse Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2016
    ISBN9780819232489
    Sparrow: A Journey of Grace and Miracles While Battling ALS
    Author

    Jennifer R. Durant

    Jennifer R. Durant was an Episcopal priest, serving as the Associate Rector at Church of Our Saviour in Charlottesville, Virginia at the time of her death in February 2015. In 2011, she graduated with an MDiv from Virginia Theological Seminary, relocated her family to where God called them, and received an ALS diagnosis. She juggled full-time family, ministry, and disease with her husband, two teenagers, two cats, and a black lab in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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      Book preview

      Sparrow - Jennifer R. Durant

      CHAPTER ONE

      Life … Only Better

      img1

      The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone.

      OSWALD CHAMBER¹

      Date night.

      Like many married couples, date night was an important part of our lives. Our busy lives were crowded with T-ball, ballet, gymnastics, and preschool field trips; taking care of the house, and the dogs and the cat, the laundry, the dishes, dinner, school lunches; and then our careers. My color-coded calendar looked like the command post of a general. Date night was a way to connect and take a deep breath. To remember why it is we fell in love.

      My husband, Matt, and I met when I was in college at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I was spending the summer of 1988 working for my dad, who managed Marshfield Airport. Matt was a flight instructor—making my dad, Skip, his boss. Tricky? Yes.

      I laid eyes on a very handsome, smart young man—and the butterflies I felt were mutual. It was a spark—and I am certain God chose Matt for me and me for him. For both of us, it was definitely a case of knowing each other was the one. We were engaged within months, at Christmas of that same year (with my dad’s blessing, no less). We were young and in love in the season of joy and colorful lights on the tree, tinsel, and the magic of Christ’s birth.

      Now, years later, married with two kids, we were trying—like many marrieds—to keep that magic alive with date night. We were both busy career people; we’d moved for our jobs, dedicated ourselves to the vocations we chose, him to piloting, me to corporate recruiting. Even more wonderful, a chocolate martini was being shaken. I couldn’t wait to taste it. But the bartender with his jigger, the music playing in the bar area, my silk blouse and freshly done hair, none of it could wash away my nerves.

      I was jittery.

      I had big news to tell my beloved husband. Big news. On a par with the stick turned blue news. I was not pregnant. But it was a miracle all its own.

      God was calling me. She had big plans for me. In fact, they were bigger plans than I even could have imagined for myself—God doesn’t think in limitations. God’s visions are limitless. But what I knew that night, as I sat waiting for Matt, was that she wanted me to honor her calling. I was going to become an Episcopal

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