Finding Strength in Weakness: Help and Hope for Families Battling Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome (CFIDS) is not the 'Yuppie flu.' It is a debilitating, incurable illness that hijacks the body's immune system and drains the life out of its victims, often leaving them incapacitated for years. While researchers around the globe explore the causes of treatments for CFIDS, the men, women and children who suffer with the illness grapple with questions like: -Will I ever be normal again? -Of what value am I now that I can't work or go to school anymore? -How will CFIDS affect my marriage and my family? How will CFIDS affect my ability even to consider marriage or having children? -How do I glorify God in the midst of a debilitating illness and pain? Lynn Vanderzalm and her teenage daughter, Alisa, have battled CFIDS for over seven years. In Finding Strength in Weakness, Vanderzalm shares her family's struggles and questions-along with those of 70 other men, women, and children-while offering direction, encouragement, and hope to the countless families who battle with the 'mystery illness of the nineties.'

Lynn Vanderzalm, who along with her daughter has struggled with CFIDS for nearly twelve years, is the author of two books: Finding Strength in Weakness: Help and Hope for Families Battling Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Zondervan) and Spiritual Sunlight: Meditations for the Chronically Fatigued (Shaw). Vanderzalm, an editor with Tyndale, lives with her husband, Bas, in the Portland, Oregon area, where they attend a Presbyterian church. The Vanderzalms, who have been active for nearly two decades in Christian relief and development work among the poor, have two grown children.