Beyond the Visible Edge
A Grieving Mother’s Pilgrimage While Walking the Dog
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Looking eastward from our front porch, I can see a grassy area at the edge of our mobile home community where children play and residents walk their dogs. Just beyond that grassy area is a hidden field where I walked a dog while grieving the loss of a grown son.
The field is hidden by a manmade earthen berm along the back of the grassy area—the visible edge of our mobile home community. Once open farmland, that hidden field is now part of a reclaimed natural wetlands project for educational and recreational use.
It’s a small field, just 30 acres of grasses and weeds and flowers, with a mowed pathway that leads around the center of the field past a pond, a bench, and birdhouses on metal posts. Surrounded by trees on three sides and the berm in front, it is a secluded place of nature’s solitude. The entire project is called the Arlington Wetlands. I call it my healing place. I would never have found it except for a Boston terrier named Ribbons. And I wouldn’t have had Ribbons if not for another dog named Lil. So often in life, one thing leads to another and only in retrospection can we see God’s hand in it all.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
An unexpected phone call creates a foreboding fear of death, testing a mother’s faith. "Hi Mom, it's your son Bob." Her smile quickly fades; her son is in the hospital. He has just been told he has multiple myeloma—a bone marrow cancer—and there is no cure. Betsy found hope in her faith that God could heal, so she waited and prayed for four years and three months for a miracle. Unfortunately, prayers did not bring healing, and this mother’s heart was broken. Dealing with grief became unbearable when an exceptionally comforting Boston Terrier became another loss. A journey of restoration begins with a newly acquired Boston Terrier named Ribbons. While striving to accept God’s will in the loss of her son, Betsy discovers that walking the dog becomes a spiritual pilgrimage. Healing happens as God and grief meet in a secluded field just beyond the visible edge of her mobile home community. Moments of deep sorrow yield to the comfort of God’s beauty in nature. A field of cheerful yellow flowers…a majestic morning sunrise…a bird’s delightful song…all become gifts of joy and hope. The fear of death fades after one special moment in that field she calls her healing place, where she experiences God’s intimate, healing presence. In this wonderfully written memoir, the author hopes to help others overcome their fear of death and to reaffirm their faith in God in spite of the very real struggles of dealing with grief. It’s one of those must-read books on grieving the loss of a child that will help people trust God’s wisdom and goodness beyond the edge of this visible life.
About the Author
Betsy Kelleher grew up on an Iowa farm that cultivated her love of nature and animals. For many years, she wrote books and newspaper columns for horse lovers. After losing a son to cancer, she shared her experience with God’s healing presence in her memoir, Beyond the Visible Edge, A Grieving Mother’s Pilgrimage While Walking the Dog. She and her husband, Russ, live near the Arlington Wetlands conservation project in Pontoon Beach, Illinois, including the secluded field that became her healing place.