It is a fact of life that all individuals must encounter pain and some tribulation during their time on earth. Some are put to a greater test than others, but all struggle to find ways to cope with trauma that will ensure survival.
Antoinette Bosco has been dealt a challenging hand in her life and, through necessity, has used her formidable intelligence and rich spirituality to seek and discover meaning for the many tragedies that have intruded on her peace.
Five years ago she lived through her youngest son Peter's suicide and, two years later, the murder of another son, John, and his wife Nancy by a psychopathic killer.
"Those three years became a time for reflecting on how life is full of the bad and the good,
the trials, and the triumphs. It was a period plunging me back into the paradox all
Christians face," writes Bosco. "Is this, Lord, how you force us to stay on the right path, the one that leads to the destiny you set for us, that place where our hearts and souls are merged with the Source of our being?"
From the ashes of these horrors came The Pummeled Heart
Bosco's journey is based in the stark realism of acceptance with which damaged souls must begin. She acknowledges that no one is spared life's blows and, in fact, we are better for experiencing the large and small tragedies offered to us.
She takes the reader step by step through the intense anger a victim of unjust happenings feels to a plateau of making sense of pain as one searches for meaning. The next stage embraces the healing process and the attendant ways of getting "unstuck in pain."
Finally, Bosco asserts,
"God gets closer -- blow by blow....I have become convinced that it takes the
blows to get the blinders off so that we can see, really see, what is important and get
wise enough to ask: Why have I been given this life, and what is it that I am supposed
to do in the time I have been given?"
The Pummeled Heart is a richly spiritual and profoundly
inspirational guide for those confronting life's challenges. Its lessons are given freely
by a woman who has experienced great suffering and pain and yet remains at peace
with herself and her world.
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