Thank you Annette for allowing the Lord to use your journey, your devotions to Him, your stories, your poems and your gift in writing to bring healing and restoration to a young couple and young family to trust in Him again. Each night when we completed a devotion together, we both witnessed how our weaknesses and tears were transformed into His strength again. This strength then poured in love, honesty, support, joy, empathy, encouragement, patience, kindness, and every other good thing God promised us back into our marriage, our family and most importantly, left us longing for Heavenly Father more and more. The Gift of Tears devotional truly is a gift.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Gift of Tears. This devotional guide is beautifully peppered with original parables, poems, practical reflections, and poignant life stories for personal reflection and growth. My favorite part was an exercise in chapter four about gratitude. I’ll be passing on my copy to my daughter who is headed into Christian ministry with her soon to be husband.

So moving, engaging, and relatable! It enabled me to experience God in new and creative ways, and to deepen my relationship with him!

Can “tears” be a “gift”? Annette Ford, in a series of uplifting devotionals, convinces us that they can. Ford deals with different themes each week: “tears of praise, confession, identity, thanksgiving, joy, healing, emotions, purpose, suffering, and encouragement.” Each devotional contains a deeply personal story, a thoughtful reflection, apt Bible passages, and creative “prayer activities.” Tears can be a gift if we take time to reflect on God’s precious lessons in the humdrum and grind of daily life. Read this beautiful devotional and let God bestow on you “a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of despair…” (Isa. 61:3)

This 10-week devotional journey comes as a timely and pleasant surprise to me. This book encourages me to experience tears as a gift from God, a nourishment to my soul, and an invitation to know Him in a deeper way. I enjoy the author’s arrangement of the book as she divides it into10 weeks each with a theme, so that the readers can either start the devotional book from the beginning to the end; or pick a theme of the week according to one’s preference. This book takes me on a spiritual journey with incredible joy, knowing that I do not need to fight back my tears due to embarrassment or regard it as a sign of weakness. It is okay to not be okay, my Heavenly Father accepts me as who I am. Through the author’s authentic life stories, the insights she has gained from contemplating God’s Word, and the interesting parables; the readers are able to access encouragement, comfort, and hope, with the readings allowing God to bring them through to a place of victory.

This is an excellent guide to listening prayer. As the readers follow the bible verses and prayer activities, it helps to create a sacred space to intentionally listen to God and to respond to His voice. My daughter and I were having a devotion together one day on the Life Story: Where Is Joy?  (p. 90). We ended up sharing laughter and tears of joy, being inspired by the chaotic situation in the story and knowing that bad days can be frustrating but it is comforting that God sees them and may even allow them to happen in order to help us grow and become stronger. Another inspiring one as we had the devotion together is the Parable: Shadow Meets the Great Horse (p. 141). We can relate to Shadow in some sense at different points in our lifetime, and wonder whether our lives can be used meaningfully or not. We sensed that God encouraged us by Philippians 2:5-13, that we must experience humility and waiting because that is God’s will for us. Humility has its profound power in it. I strongly recommend this book to those who want to walk authentically with God and desire to listen to Him in their Christian journey.