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A Christian Approach to Overcoming Disability

A Doctor's Story

• By Elaine Leong Eng, Harold G. Koenig

• Price: $17.95
• Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
• Pages: 148
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 23rd December 2003
• ISBN: 978-0-7890-2258-5

About the Book

Learn how faith and psychological insight can combine to help Christians overcome physical disabilities!

After being diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, Dr. Elaine Leong Eng, author of “Martha, Martha”: How Christians Worry, knew she had to make important life changes. This genetic disease would soon cause her eyesight to fail. Her impending blindness meant that she would no longer be able to practice as an obstetrician/gynecologist. Her family life would never be the same, nor would her self-image. A Christian Approach to Overcoming Disability: A Doctor's Story is the poignant and inspiring story of Dr. Eng’s ultimately triumphant struggle with an untreatable illness and a life-changing disability.

Once I heard the diagnosis, I knew it was God’s way of granting my prayer to be a full-time mom to my babies. God had prepared my heart to accept this news. This so-called “tragedy” in my life was very much for the good. I had the chance to “see” and care for my children during those precious young years. To play with them, sing songs, teach them, feed them, and do all those wonderful mothering things that many take for granted. And now that they are grown, I can see in my mind’s eye all those great images and memories. I enjoyed motherhood so much that I would not have changed my life in any way if given the chance.

This autobiographical book articulates the challenges faced by the blind and offers faith-based and psychological techniques for coping with disability. It highlights dozens of Scriptural passages that can provide an important foundation for coping, and draws upon Dr. Eng’s experience as a psychiatrist to identify important issues and feelings about blindness and its psychological and emotional impact on every aspect of life.

In this insightful book, you’ll find:

• firsthand information about the experience of becoming disabled, and about living with, even celebrating, that disability and the new opportunities it presents
• insight about what family, friends, students, and colleagues go through when someone close to them becomes disabled
• biblical references that demonstrate the importance of God in meeting physical challenges
• important scriptural foundations for coping
• practical techniques for coping with disability—from both religious and psychological perspectives
• advice on overcoming the feeling of being “damaged goods” and other problems of self-esteem common to the disabled

A Christian Approach to Overcoming Disability will inspire you with its message of hope. It offers insights about finding inner peace no matter what hand life has dealt you and making the most of whatever God has planned for your life. Anyone who knows a Christian who has any type of physical disability will benefit from reading this book.

Table of Contents

• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. God Is My Agent
• Chapter 2. Climbing the Wall
• Chapter 3. The Problem with Martha
• Chapter 4. Heart to Heart
• Chapter 5. Damaged Goods
• Chapter 6. Mind the Gap
• Chapter 7. A Mentor for Women
• Chapter 8. The Navajo Experience
• Chapter 9. A Trip to Mexico
• Chapter 10. From Thailand and Beyond
• Chapter 11. Fleece Fights Fear
• Chapter 12. Africa: Why I Go, Why I Cry
• Chapter 13. Blind Professor
• Chapter 14. World Trade Center Tragedy: From Helplessness to Healing
• Chapter 15. Bittersweet Developments: Melvin and Delvin
• Chapter 16. Unwanted Genes
• Chapter 17. The Willow in Japan
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Reference Notes Included