LuAnn Grambow, a professional Christian counselor, author and former board president of the Pregnancy Support Center, has self-published a book aimed at helping people get through tough times.
When Grambow, a lifetime Christian, experienced betrayal and abandonment by her husband of 21 years, life seemed absolutely hopeless.
According to a press release, “God gave her ‘Hope Found in Paradise Lost,’ a dramatically changed perspective that magnified her hope and joy, empowered her refocused life purpose and evolved into the metaphorical story and book of the same name.”
She describes “Hope Found in Paradise Lost” as a book for Christians fed up with “mediocre, meaningless living.” It addresses two challenges: coping with disappointments and hurts “and the struggle to live beyond ourselves. It makes an enlightening connection between the two: disappointing life experiences ultimately convince us that all our efforts to build the perfect, happy life are without guarantee.”
Grambow writes in the release that “God wants to use this distressing revelation to free us from our covert life purpose of self-centered pursuit of comfortable circumstances” to pursue God’s purposes in life.
The book blends Grambow’s training as a counselor with Biblical principles about sin and giving up self.
She attempts to show the reader “how Satan integrated the sin-nature into our God-given human nature to entrap us into self-serving, circumstance-focused living.”
In his foreword to the book, Dr. Gary Chapman writes, ” LuAnn Grambow presents a metaphor which I think many people will find helpful. The walls we build to protect ourselves from hurt often are barriers to our spiritual growth. When a crisis comes, the walls fall down around us and we stand helpless. It is in our need that we often encounter God in a whole new way. This book does not offer a quick fix to the pains of life, however, it does draw out the road map whereby you can overcome your enslavement to the pursuit of comfortable life circumstances, come to really know God, and let him change you into someone whom he can use to bless the world …”
Grambow has a master’s degree in counseling from Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va., and has been a practicing licensed professional counselor since 1991. She has owned HopeFound Christian Counseling in Salisbury since 1999 after she and her husband moved here in 1998. She has spoken at conferences, seminars and retreats.
“It gives me such joy to be able to be involved with people and see God bring healing and transformation into lives and marriages. When circumstances allow me to share concepts about the ‘HopeFound lifestyle,’ whether in speaking engagements or in my office, that is often the time that the most profound changes occur.”
“HopeFound in Paradise Lost” may be ordered from Xulon Press at www.xulonpress.com, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or Books-a-Million.