I first met Emily DeArdo in 2015 at a conference in Charleston, SC. Jennifer Fulwiler was broadcasting her Sirius XM radio show live from a meeting room in the conference hotel, and we were sitting in the audience laughing and enjoying the excitement leading up to the wacky and inspiring Edel Gathering.
As far as first impressions go, I liked Emily on the spot. Her joie de vivre was as contagious as her smile. This gregarious young woman was delightful, and we exchanged pleasantries.
Here was a woman who was alive and loving life. And then I heard her story and I knew she couldn’t be any other way but joyful. Joy, a fruit of the Holy Spirit that brings us close to God. A love of life that comes from having faced death.
Living Memento Mori: My Journey Through the Stations of the Cross invites the reader to journey with Christ, as Emily has, by contemplating suffering through the Stations of the Cross. It sounds like a heavy book with a deep subject, and it is undeniably so. But it is much more.
It is a lesson in the power of vulnerability.
Emily shares her hardships of living with cystic fibrosis, and subsequently, a double lung transplant. She shares how this challenge and suffering informs her relationship with Jesus Christ, and what that means to her mortality. Her story is one of hope, not despair.
Emily invites us to walk the Via Dolorosa with Christ. We see in Emily a model for bearing our own crosses with gratitude and joy. In contemplating our deaths, we come to appreciate our lives. I recommend this book for anytime, but it’s a perfect book for Lent.
Pre-order yours now — it releases on January 24th!
Aww, thank you so much Maria! 🙂