Soul Custody

Every day, inner and outer violence ravages the soul, leaving us weak, fearful, and malnourished. In Soul Custody, Stephen W. Smith presents eight choices to help readers reclaim custody of their one and only life—choices about silence, community, vocation, honoring the body, finding one’s true self, and more. As Smith reminds readers, allowing God to shape the soul leads to the deep, full, and satisfying life that God had in mind all along. This is not a self-help book. It is not a book of easy steps to a happy life. It is an invitation to the life God dreams for each of His children. It is a call to start living—to let the soul wake up to life as God intended.

The positive male presence has always been extremely important in our society. However, for decades that presence has become more scarce and is lacking in the very places where it is most needed: schools, churches, and especially homes. As time goes on, more families are breaking apart because men are walking away. I often wonder if it was my destiny to experience this first hand. Soul Custody is my testimony. It depicts how people can seem to have it all together while completely broken and falling apart inside. In telling my story, I hope to help other men and women dealing with feelings of abandonment, neglect, lack of self-worth, and the despair that is often felt in the absence of the maternal or paternal presence. It is my prayer that this book will assist in the healing process, and help every reader to find a way to move forward.

The Handbook of Divorce and Custody brings together mental health professionals and forensic specialists dedicated to working in the legal arena with families in crisis. Section I provides the individual perspectives of experienced clinicians, all of whom share a psychodynamic and developmental purview, and supplements their accounts with the viewpoints of a lawyer and a judge. Section II examines parental psychopathology, which is often at the root of family conflict and turmoil. Section III deals with the nature and extent of the state's potential involvement with the family, from ensuring parents' rights to raise their children to identifying those circumstances that justify the termination of parental rights. The remaining three sections follow the progressive issues engaged by divorcing families as they work their way through the legal system: forensic evaluation, post-divorce legal arrangements, and the emotional aftermath of divorce, including indications for various types of therapeutic intervention. Through the Handbook, contributors pay special attention to a set of core issues that underlie - and complicate - the evaluations, recommendations, and judicial determinations that enter into the divorce/custody process. Specifically, they focus on the inherent conflict between the family's right to privacy and the state's commitment to the best interest of children; the increasingly uncertain question of what constitutes a family and who has the right to legal standing; the problematic role of fathers in the lives of their children; the nature of the evaluation process and the role of the forensic expert in a "good enough" evaluation; the important differences between the role of therapist and the role of evaluator; and, finally, the impact of divorce itself on the lives of today's children.

Explaining complex family law concepts and procedures in a jargon-free style, this resource includes detailed information on how family court works, offers easily understandable case examples, and describes alternatives to litigation that are designed to help prevent families with children from entering the legal system to resolve disputes. Exploring subjects that apply to all parties involved in resolving separation, divorce, and custody conflictsjudges, lawyers, mediators, parenting coaches, psychologists, family counselors, and social workersthis reference demystifies the role of lawyers and judges, debunks the myth that parents can represent themselves in court, and examines each parents responsibility to ensure that post-separation conflicts are resolved with minimal emotional stress to children.

Offers advice from judges and lawyers to help in divorce

“With a sensitive heart and introspective mind, Ann Hazard has written a concise and deeply practical devotional guide for any man or woman trying to navigate the treacherous waters of Divorce Country. “Ann shares highly personal parts of her own journey through divorce and invites you, the reader to embrace the wise and practical discoveries she has made. “This profound guidebook offers no easy answers, but carefully guides the reader to face each day with courage. You will identify with the myriad of feelings that can scramble the life of any person facing a journey through the lonely, barren land of divorce. You will find points of personal healing and growth as you move from day to day and page to page in this chronicle of hope. “There is a bright light shining at the end of your tunnel through divorce. That light is hope, and Ann helps you open your heart each day in this powerful book. You are not alone. God loves you! Read slowly. Grow consistently.” Jim Smoke Author of: Growing Through Divorce, Single Again: The Uncertain Journey, Moving Forward: Finding Hope and Peace in the Midst of Divorce and Growing Beyond Divorce

Every true Christian longs to be closer in their relationship to Jesus Christ, and obtain a more intimate communion with God. This is the point of this puritan devotional. Herle has taken the role of a preacher, and presented the preaching of the Gospel, particularly the passion and death of Christ, in a devotional manner. What is a devotional? A devotional is akin to the meditative aspects of a sermon (direct application to the self) and how the text launches the reader into their own meditations (how it applies to “me” personally) as directly applied to the soul. Devotionals, like this one, do this step by step, one day at a time. Each chapter is a respective day’s meditation. In this work, there are 41 devotionals on the passion and death of Christ, with a concluding meditation on the resurrection; that Christ is a dying and rising Savior. In addition, Herle thought it important to add into each devotional a kind of ending prayer. Each day there are two or three prayers linked to the devotionals that allow you to become more thoughtful about these important biblical points as they relate to what happened to Jesus, what he did for his people, and how they can be prayed back to him for the soul’s edification and benefit. The goal in this devotional is to meditate and consider the passion of the Lord Jesus (from the Garden of Gethsemane to his death at Golgotha), and then consider what happened on the cross as he is nailed there dying for sinners. These devotionals work themselves out daily. Readers would draw the most virtue from this work, and from Jesus Christ, if they deal with one chapter each day for 41 days. But they are only as helpful as they are thoughtful and dedicated about considering them. Devotionals are not about simply flexing one’s theological muscles each day. It is primarily to gain the real blessing of the Spirit, further conformity to the image of Jesus Christ, and a deeper fellowship with the Father as you come to understand the passion of Christ, and his death on the cross in redeeming sinners.