An excellent book on waiting from someone who has been there (and is still there). Swindell combines her creative reimagining of the Bleeding Woman's story (found in the gospels) with her own struggle with trichotillomania and with the truth of God's Word and His heart for His people.

Her writing is full of compassion and understanding, and I greatly appreciated her vulnerability. The writing was repetitive at times and sometimes seemed to drag, though being split into the three areas of focus that I mentioned helped to break it up a bit.

A couple of my favorite quotes:

"[Jesus] knows what it is to have no way out of his circumstances. He knows what it is to be broken, in his heart and in his limbs. His body pulverized. His spirit abandoned. He knows what it is to wait for God to come through - and to die in the waiting." (p. 17)

"The waiting sheared down my strength and hope. That's because there's a cost to waiting that's impossible to ignore: the cost of self-sufficiency. Waiting forces us to surrender our reliance on our own ability to pay up, to come through, to make it happen. The cost of waiting demands the payment of our self-sufficiency, and we pay in our acknowledgment of our inability to be enough." (p. 60) ( )

As a writer and speaker, Ann Swindell wants to see women freed through God’s love. She loves words and gained a Master of Arts in Writing from DePaul University. She is married, has a daughter, and is passionate about helping people strengthen their writing whilst journeying with Christ.

This is the story of Ann Swindell’s journey as a sufferer of Trichotillomania - hair pulling -whilst learning, through the scriptural story of the woman who had been bleeding for many years, God’s reason for allowing her to wait for a solution to her problem.

A reader beginning this book is confronted with the distress surrounding the trichotillomania from which Ann suffered. This distress is also apparent in the bleeding woman story (Ann has called her Sarah) in scripture. The distress is so poignant in both Ann’s and Sarah’s stories that the reader wants to find some hope as a catharsis to the strong emotions that the stories evoke. This hope the reader is looking for is God! Ann’s home and school life were described as idyllic rather than stressful - stress is often considered a trigger for the condition.

In the second last chapter Ann relayed some questions that God asked her, and what his final response was. Once I read this particular section of the book I felt as if God were saying it directly to me, reassuring me that my strength also comes from his love. It was an extremely powerful moment for me as a reader. Like Ann, and I’m sure many other people around the world, I am also waiting for healing. The waiting is not always easy but it will be well worth it in the end. God is our hope, and that is our strength.

Thank you Ann for being brave enough to let us into this life-long condition and the positive journey you are on with your Lord and Saviour.

Tyndale House Publishers has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book.
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