A Joy I'd Never Known: When I Gave Up Control, I Found . . . [abridged]

Just a year after her husband Dave beat cancer and resumed his pitching career, Jan Dravecky found herself fighting a crippling depression that refused to lift. Admonitions to "snap out of it" or "pray through it" only left her guilt-ridden and exhausted. She wondered, can a Christian woman really lose her mind? A Joy I’d Never Known is Jan Dravecky’s gripping story of her comeback from a devastating clinical depression. With unsettling candor, she offers a behind-the-scenes look at how God prepared the Draveckys for their ministry to the hurting by first leading them through their own dark, tear-filled valley. Jan’s struggles and triumphs are played out not on a baseball diamond, but in hidden chambers of the soul, on a painful, sometimes terrifying journey from being a "woman in control" to a woman under God’s control. It is a journey that winds from Jan’s protected childhood through a series of tragic losses (including her husband’s recurring cancer and eventual amputation), the downward spiral of depression, the lack of understanding from those around her, and finally, to hope, growth, and joy that came as she sought and found the help she needed. Along the way, Jan sheds some much-needed light on mental illness and the importance of a balanced, surrendered lifestyle. Says Jan, "God knew better than I where my journey was to take me. I was aiming for perfection; he brought me to a better place, a place of grace and peace." A Joy I’d Never Known offers encouragement to those struggling with the crushing pressures of life. For all who feel the lingering shame of emotional trauma or the compulsive need to "keep it together" no matter what, Jan Dravecky offers the comfort of empathy, the hope of release . . . and points the way to a joy beyond imagination.