Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway

A “special work” (J. S. Park) that honors life’s deep griefs, great joys, and unsettled in-betweens through every sacred season, assuring us that we are never alone

“Oh, I love this book. . . . Honest and hopeful, masterfully written, both a balm and a bolstering.”—Shauna Niequist, New York Times bestselling author

Exquisitely told and urgently resonant, Even After Everything is a love letter to anyone who has opened their heart only to be hurt. Stephanie Duncan Smith proposes that it’s not through grit or forced resilience that you will find a way forward, but through receiving the full spectrum of our lives, just as we receive the empathy of God-with-us in every moment.

Duncan Smith’s disorientation began when she lost her first pregnancy on the winter solstice, just as the world readied to celebrate its most historic birth on Christmas. Then a new yet uncertain pregnancy unfolded parallel to the pandemic, until nearly one year to the day of her loss, she gave birth to her daughter at the peak of mortality in their city. These contradictions compelled Duncan Smith into a desperate search for steadiness, which she found in the liturgical year as a grounding force and the promise that we are seen by God in every season.

In Even After Everything, Duncan Smith traverses the church’s circle of time and reorients herself and us in the sacred story told through Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, and Ordinary Time. She reveals the sacred year—through its endless interplay of love, loss, risk, and resurrection—as a mirror to the human experience, an anchor for turbulent times, and a womb strong enough to encompass every human care. At its heart lives the promise of God-with-us, inviting us into the spiritual practice of taking courage in the trust that we are accompanied in everything, and love will always have the last word.

Stephanie Duncan Smith is a writer and senior editor at HarperOne who has spent her career developing award-winning and bestselling authors. She is the creator of Slant Letter, a bestselling Substack email newsletter for writers looking to deepen their craft and do it in style. Duncan Smith completed her master’s in theology at Western Theological Seminary, where she was the winner of the Frederick Buechner Prize for Excellence in Writing. She lives with her husband, Zach, a professor, and their two children in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.