Cecil Murphey helps readers work through the messiness of life

In Making Sense When Life Doesn’t Cecil Murphey helps readers accept,

adapt and flourish when the trials of life throw them off track.

Life is like cleaning the house—no matter how hard you work to clean up the mess, tomorrow the clutter and disorder will reappear, and it will just need cleaning again. In Making Sense When Life Doesn’t: The Secrets of Thriving in Tough Times(Summerside Press, April 2012, ISBN 978-1609362249, $14.99) best-selling author Cecil Murphey writes that while life’s messiness is unavoidable, it’s how a person chooses to respond to the mess that matters.

None of us wants to be an expert on messes, but Murphey has walked through many hard times himself. In his career as a writer, pastor and missionary, he’s been a witness to what tragedy and change have done in the lives of countless others. Combined, these experiences allow him to share the secrets of thriving in tough times with wisdom and compassion.

In a gentle and encouraging way, Cec offers simple and profound insights for living a significant life such as:

·         I need the empty spaces in life to learn to accept fullness in life.

·         I need my opponents. They often speak the truth that my friends won’t.

·         To appreciate others’ accomplishments enables me to enjoy my own success.

·         We all have regrets about the things we’ve done. The biggest regrets are about the things we didn’t do.

·         It’s okay to feel sorry for yourself or get angry or depressed—that’s normal and natural. But don’t let those negative emotions control your life.

·         Changes will happen. I can accept them now, or I’ll be forced to accept them later.

·         We all have soft spots, and as long as they remain, we’ll automatically switch into a defensive mode to protect ourselves.

An excerpt from Making Sense When Life Doesn’t by Cecil Murphey ©2012 Summerside Press.

Why This Mess?

Why Now?

The title states the two ways I’ve heard the same question. We seem to think that if we’re good people, especially if we’re religious or spiritually minded, life will flow rather well for us, and we’ll encounter few hardships.

Then, without warning, chaos lands on top of us. Or confusion. Or problems. Regardless of the term we use, we don’t like it, and we don’t understand.

Asking either of the questions above comes out of our attempt to control life—and we need to get past that silly, futile idea.

The answer to both questions is simple:

I need this mess, and I need this mess right now.

Because I truly believe in a God who is sovereign, I also believe He knows what I need. I know what I want (or think I do), but I tend to opt for the easy, the quick, the expedient. Yet that’s not the way I mature as a person.

I want to grow, yet I hate going through the messes of life. We’ve all heard “No pain, no gain.” It works the same way with life as it does with physical fitness.

The messes in life are my best teachers. I don’t like them, but I need them.