I am sorry I am so late in reading this and sending my review but I still wanted to do it.
What a great book. So many times I paused and sat with the words Jennifer had written because they hit me right where I am at. She opens up her heart and soul and i could feel her as she cried out to God. I so connected to the part where she was saying she felt He didn’t see her and how she came to the realization He does and the shame of even questioning that about God. I loved that this wasn’t all about Sandy Hook but Jennifer’s journey with God

Finding Sanctuary is a look inside the raw and emotional spiritual journey of Jennifer Hubbard. An everyday mom and wife, her world was knocked upside down when she lost her daughter, Catherine, in the Sandy Hook shooting. Jennifer shows us how she found her faith, gave her pain to God, and let the grief change her for the better. She writes as if speaking to a best friend, who reaches out from her own grief to show us that no matter what our pain is, there is hope and healing. This is a difficult true story to read, and even more difficult to put down. Sad, but encouraging, this book will help strengthen your own journey and remind you that no matter the circumstances God will always reach out and show you the way. (I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher for my honest review.)

Some stories are so tragic that it is difficult to imagine survivors finding recovery. But Jennifer Hubbard is no ordinary woman, and her pathway to healing and hope is incredible.

Hubbard, who is a gifted storyteller, speaks about the unspeakable in Finding Sanctuary: How the Wild Work of Peace Restored the Heart of a Sandy Hook mother. Hubbard's beloved six-year-old daughter died in the Sandy Hook school shooting. With determination and grace, the author recounts how she managed to find peace in the wake of a mother's worst nightmare.

I was riveted by Hubbard's candor and vulnerability; I was captivated by her resolve and resilience.

Rather than becoming embittered and unforgiving, Hubbard has managed to carve out a life that rises from the ashes of pain, giving hope to the most despairing among us.

Whether you are in the throes of grief or have been wounded by heartache in some other way, let Jennifer Hubbard help you discover a path forward to a place of soul-nourishing peace.

4 stars

Lovely book about the redemptive and transformative power of suffering—as Viktor Frankl is quoted in the Foreword, “ Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”

After tragically losing her 7-year-old daughter in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the author struggles to bring a semblance of order back to her life. Turning to her faith, she finds solace and understanding in the Bible and her relationship to God. Through journaling, she finds her relationship with God transformed from a distant and largely impersonal one, to a personal and intimate relationship. She finds, over the course of her journaling, that “the Lord God of the first book seems very different from the Lord God of what is now the tenth. And I dare to hope that the Lord God of my twentieth will be a completely different one than my Lord God of today—not because he is different but because I will be different—changed and transformed.”

Moving from a place of fear and anxiety, she recognizes that “fear and anxiety are intended to freeze, and we are not called to be stagnant—stagnant waters have the potential to poison.” She finds purpose in the small things such as packing her son’s lunchbox, realizing that “… when your heart is shattered, curling up in a ball and sleeping your heartbreak away won’t help you nearly so much as getting out of bed and doing the one thing in front of you that you know you can do. And when that one thing is done, do the next thing to be done. Look no further than the next thing. Put one foot in front of the other. This is how your soul is fed with purpose—these seemingly simple actions are the manna that will sustain you on what is going to be a long journey.”

Throughout, the author is able to discern the plan that God has for her life. She moves through various stages of anger, hopelessness, to a position where she is assured of God’s love for her and His abiding presence.

There is very little in the book about the actual events that took place on December 14, 2012. In that sense, the book is universal—less a personal memoir (although it is that) than a message for all who suffer. The author repeatedly refers to her “it”—the event that launched her search for meaning and for God—and acknowledges that everyone has their own “it”. In fact, the book is designed to encourage the reader to ask of themselves the hard questions—at the end of each chapter are several questions to initiate discussion and the book could easily be used by a grief group, etc.

It seems more than a little strange to call Jennifer Hubbard's "Finding Sanctuary: How the Wild Work of Peace Restored the Heart of a Sandy Hook Mother" a light and breezy read, but doing so likely speaks volumes about the genuine restoration of heart that has taken place for Hubbard in the years since her six-year-old daughter Catherine was killed during the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings on December 14, 2012.

The truth is that "Finding Sanctuary" is an inspirational read, a book that is immersed deeply within Hubbard's Catholic faith and how that faith helped her survive an experience that most human beings can't begin to understand and I'd dare say no human being ever wants to understand or experience.

If you're looking for a book that weaves its way through the Sandy Hook experience, "Finding Sanctuary" will not be that book. Hubbard, at least for the most part, only devotes one chapter of "Finding Sanctuary" to December 14, 2012 and the way in which it unfolded for herself and, to a lesser degree, her son who attended that same school and survived the shooting.

Rather than taking us through the Sandy Hook experience or even through those ever familiar stages of grief, Hubbard provides with "Finding Sanctuary" a peace-seeking glimpse into the deepening of faith that can arrive when one surrenders to Christ's path of hope even in the darkest moments of life.

"Finding Sanctuary" doesn't try to make sense of the senseless, but it does try, and succeeds, to find meaning and hope in surviving that senseless and moving forward with faith, hope, love, and a sense of purpose.

Hubbard fills "Finding Sanctuary" with scriptural references, not from a point of exegesis but from a point of how that scripture pointed her own journey toward God and toward a greater peace in her life. Yet, rest assured that "Finding Sanctuary" never for a single moment glosses over the horrific loss of the animal loving Catherine with such revelations as her bedroom to this day remaining as it was serving as a powerful reminder that while Hubbard has found restoration she is still a mother who embraces her daughter every single day of her life.

As a longtime child advocate and peace activist, I've felt a kinship with the parents and survivors of Sandy Hook largely because my own daughter had been taken on December 14th many years ago. December 14th has long been one of those "red circle" dates on the calendar that I now typically honor with prayer, reflection, and the reverence it deserves as a key date in my life despite the fact that my daughter would now be an adult and likely long gone from my home. I've been asked many times how I maintained my faith given this experience and given other life experiences. The true value, at least for me, of "Finding Sanctuary" is that Hubbard beautifully illustrates and answers that question and leans into it gently yet with poignant vulnerability. I myself feel less alone in having had my faith guide my restoration and my God restore my hope.

As "Finding Sanctuary" winds down, of course, we will learn about the animal sanctuary that now bears Catherine Violet Hubbard's name - a sanctuary that was, interestingly enough, borne out of a typographical error that occurred in Catherine's printed obituary and led to a relationship for Jennifer with a small non-profit of like-minded animal lovers who understood and embraced a bigger vision for honoring Catherine's life and legacy.

"Finding Sanctuary" may not quite be the book that you're expecting it to be, but it's a rather beautiful book of wonder about the healing and transformation that can take place when we entrust every moment of our lives to God from the overwhelming joys to the unfathomable despair.