It took an awful experience over two years ago for Laura Baber Beach to finish her first book.

Though the Cartersville native describes her divorce as being very painful, the author is also thankful for her struggle and thinks it’s a natural and needed part of her life and the lives of others.

“This celebrates weakness, really,” Beach said of her new book, “Rhythms of Restoration: Practicing Grief On The Path Of Grace,” noting that society has been taught to always be strong, no matter what.

The 111-page book is a field guide of mini-retreats for the hurting and those who help them and originated from the one-on-one work that Beach does as the founder of Equipping Lydia, a non-profit organization.

“When bad stuff happens, people really question where their faith is even if they’ve had a long-term faith,” she said.

As Beach worked to help people experience restoration through spiritual direction, she began to notice a trend with the people she came in contact with.

A lot of them, Beach said, didn’t have a healthy place to process their losses.

“Over, for the last six or seven years, I’ve been collecting the prayers that have been particularly helpful in those sessions and expanding them and sharing them with other people … This book is a compilation of those years of work, really.”

Founded in 2006, Equipping Lydia also works with the weary and burned out, helping them regain their space of faith.

“We really work with people in front-line roles around the world, like working with the poor, people who are missionaries, running non-profits and who deal with a lot of injustice or a hard situation and need a space to come out of that and find some respite,” the Cumberland High School graduate said.

“Even the strongest Christians can be caught off guard by grief,” Beach’s book reads.

“When loss occurs, despair can roll in much like an unexpected tide. When that tide comes, emotional pain can feel a lot like the quicksand surrounding Mont Saint-Michel.”

The order of the work’s chapters — denial, pain and shame, anger, loneliness and despair and restoration — are also the classic phases of the journey through grief, according to Beach.

“Grief is typically not like a ladder you climb. It’s more circular like a slinky, I often see,” she said.

In the chapters, she provides Bible verses and discusses the phase of the grief process. She follows with a blessing, and then come the mini-retreats. She calls it a contemplative approach.

The Kentucky resident encourages people to grieve on a regular basis rather than waiting until a traumatic incident occurs.

“In the Christian faith, we have a place where it can go. We believe that Christ takes these things, but He doesn’t force us to let them go,” she said.

Americans commonly bottle up their grief rather than dealing with the losses in humanity, Beach said.

“In Matthew, Christ talked about blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who mourn and I often talk about [how] He didn’t say blessed are those who stuff it, blessed are those who push it down, blessed are those who don’t deal with it. He said blessed are those who mourn. And they will be comforted. And it’s an active, ongoing process.”

Her favorite part of the book is at the very end where a prayer for a funeral is found. It’s the one she developed for her father’s funeral.

“I’ve lived all of them,” she said of the phases of grief, “and I practice this process of grieving regularly. And I’ve had a lot of losses in my life, and so I’m standing today because of these practices.” Her ultimate hope for those who read the book is finding relief.

To purchase the book, visit store.seedbed.com/products/rhythms-of-restoration, call (859) 533-2757 or (804) 339-6363 or email laura@equippinglydia.org.