The Box Must Be Empty: A Memoir of Complicated Grief, Spiritual Despair, and Ultimate Healing Audiobook

What happens when buried grief rises two decades late, upending the life you’ve built on its coffin? When you add loss upon loss by constantly moving, serving a church organization—and possible cult—that expects unwavering sacrifice? How do you restore a devastated marriage, a crushed faith, and an endlessly broken heart?

Two years after Marilyn loses her fiancé to cancer, she becomes a Christian and marries Henry, joining him in a worldwide ministry that leaves little time for family or personal reflection. When her old grief resurfaces, she’s shocked by the tsunami that rips through their lives. Intensive counselling fails to bring healing, and when Henry writes a public letter that decimates their churches and spins them out of fellowship—and lifelong employment—she faces an emotional and spiritual reckoning that challenges her to the core. With unflinching honesty, Marilyn shares the missteps and keys to recovering her heart, her faith, and her self-esteem.  

Multilayered and compelling, Marilyn’s story will resonate with anyone who’s stuck in grief, navigating a mid-life career crisis, or struggling with a spiritual life that’s lost its luster or lost its way.

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“This profoundly moving memoir leads with vulnerability, communicates with grace, and delivers the kind of hard-earned wisdom that only comes with time. An intensely personal story of recovery, its lessons apply to any soul with unhealed wounds.”

— Daryl Potter, author of Even the Monsters and Bitter for Sweet