{"id":1404,"date":"2014-10-20T01:32:33","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T01:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/?p=1404"},"modified":"2014-10-19T18:41:25","modified_gmt":"2014-10-19T18:41:25","slug":"food-for-thought-refresh-me-lord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/2014\/10\/food-for-thought-refresh-me-lord.html","title":{"rendered":"Food for Thought: Refresh Me, Lord"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/files\/2013\/04\/Maureen-Pratt-Author-Pic2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-630\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/350\/2013\/04\/Maureen-Pratt-Author-Pic2-246x300.jpg\" alt=\"Maureen Pratt Author Pic\" width=\"246\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>Many of you know Lisa J. Copen as the Founder of RestMinistries, an online resource for people living with chronic pain and illness\u00a0of the invisible kind\u00a0(www.restministries.org). Each year, Lisa sponsors an &#8220;Invisible Illness Awareness Week,&#8221; and I&#8217;ve been honored to participate in it several times, with workshops and interviews.<\/p>\n<p>Lisa is also an author of several books on chronic illness and, this month, she will have a new and different book available to people who might feel that, with their health challenges, they are having trouble praying.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Refresh Me, Lord,&#8221; is a collection of prayers written by Lisa and intended to help readers get closer to God through prayer. It touches on many of the themes I covered in my book, &#8220;Peace in the Storm: Meditations on Chronic Pain &amp; Illness,&#8221; and also on some that I have no experience with, but Lisa does, such as motherhood, being a spouse, and enduring surgeries and mobility issues (especially poignant is her prayer about being uncomfortable with the visual image of using a walker).<\/p>\n<p>Lisa&#8217;s heart comes through strongly in her prayers, and her faith shows the refinement of someone who has endured &#8211; and come through &#8211; more than one dark valley, still with faith and still with hope.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Refresh Me, Lord,&#8221; is available through the RestMinistries website and online booksellers.<\/p>\n<p>Joy and peace,<\/p>\n<p>Maureen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many of you know Lisa J. Copen as the Founder of RestMinistries, an online resource for people living with chronic pain and illness\u00a0of the invisible kind\u00a0(www.restministries.org). Each year, Lisa sponsors an &#8220;Invisible Illness Awareness Week,&#8221; and I&#8217;ve been honored to participate in it several times, with workshops and interviews. Lisa is also an author of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":548,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,43],"tags":[1305,1248,207,1302,1301,1304,1300,1303],"class_list":["post-1404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chronic-pain-and-illness","category-encouragement-in-life","tag-faith-in-the-midst-of-illness","tag-food-for-thought-2","tag-invisible-illness","tag-lisa-cope","tag-lisa-j-copen","tag-new-book","tag-refresh-me-lord","tag-restministries"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Food for Thought: Refresh Me, Lord - Good Days...Bad Days With Maureen Pratt<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/2014\/10\/food-for-thought-refresh-me-lord.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Food for Thought: Refresh Me, Lord - Good Days...Bad Days With Maureen Pratt\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Many of you know Lisa J. Copen as the Founder of RestMinistries, an online resource for people living with chronic pain and illness\u00a0of the invisible kind\u00a0(www.restministries.org). Each year, Lisa sponsors an &#8220;Invisible Illness Awareness Week,&#8221; and I&#8217;ve been honored to participate in it several times, with workshops and interviews. 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She expected to be writing scripts. God had other plans. A few years after her graduation, Maureen was diagnosed with a life-threatening case of organ-involved lupus. Her life turned upside down as she grappled with the effects of the illness and other health conditions that ensued. She was no stranger to serious health challenges; even as a child, Maureen had survived numerous bouts of pneumonia, flu, and other infections. But lupus made her take a fresh look at her life goals - and took herlifelong, strong Catholic Christian faith and writing in a direction she'd never imagined. Today, Maureen writes and speaks about walking with the Lord while living with chronic pain and illness. Her most recent book is \"Don't Panic!: How to Keep Going When the Going Gets Tough (Franciscan Media). She is also the author of, \"Peace in the Storm: Meditations on Chronic Pain &amp; Illness\" (Image Books\/Randomhouse), \"Beyond Pain: Job, Jesus, and Joy\" (Twenty-Third Publications), \"The First Year: Hypothyroidism, Second Edition\" (Perseus) and \"Taking Charge of Lupus: How to Manage the Disease and Make the Most of Your LIfe.\" She writes the syndicated column, \"Living Well,\" for Catholic News Service, and has also written for Saint Anthony Messenger Magazine, Journey for Women Magazine, The Upper Room Magazine, LupusNow, and Arthritis Today. Maureen's health continues to be a challenge, however she feels honored to be able to bring her perspective, from experience and knowledge, to others. \"Good Days...Bad Days with Maureen Pratt\" is a new way for Maureen to reach people who carry the burden of illness and pain in their lives, or who care for someone who does. Through the blog, she hopes to bring issues of health, wellness, and spirit into focus and, especially, inspire others that, no matter what health challenges, illness, or hardships they endure, each person can find a good way to realize the wonderful potential God has placed within each heart and soul.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.maureenpratt.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/author\/mpratt"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/548"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1405,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404\/revisions\/1405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gooddaysbaddays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}