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Finding Sanctuary: How the Wild Work of Peace Restored the Heart of a Sandy Hook Mother
Winner of a first-place award in memoirs, a second-place for best front cover artwork, and a third-place in the category first time author of a book from the Catholic Media Association.
Where is God when the innocent suffer? Jennifer Hubbard began to grapple with the question in 2012 when her six-year-old daughter Catherine was killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. In the depths of her grief, Hubbard founded an animal sanctuary in Catherine’s memory, creating a place of healing for her family and their community and fulfilling her daughter’s dream. Hubbard’s courageous witness will uplift your faith and demonstrate how Christ’s redemptive suffering provides a path of hope, even in the darkest moments of our lives. Hubbard’s daughter Catherine was a happy little girl who wanted to spend her life rescuing animals. All that changed on the morning of December 14, 2012. Though her daughter’s tragic death marked the end of Hubbard’s world as she’d known it, she instinctively held on to her faith in God, realizing it was the only way she could bear the initial impact of her daughter’s death and the subsequent waves of grief and loss as her marriage ended and she was forced to forge a new life. A typographic mistake on Catherine’s obituary led Hubbard to an unexpected invitation to fulfill her daughter’s dreams of opening an animal shelter. She began to channel her grief into a work of peace by starting a foundation in her daughter’s memory, by writing, and by helping her son recover after surviving the tragedy that took his sister’s life. Ultimately, it was Hubbard’s faith that gave her the courage to entrust her daughter to God and to seek his plan for her own life. “God helped me to look back on my life up to that time and to see all the ways he had been preparing me for what was to come,” she writes. In Finding Sanctuary, Hubbard shares her journey of healing and transformation in order to help those who may be grappling with an inability to trust in the goodness of God. You will Each chapter in the book is dedicated to one step in Hubbard’s journey toward wholeness and includes reflection questions to guide you to consider what God is teaching you as you make your own way toward God’s kingdom of peace.
Where is God when the innocent suffer? Jennifer Hubbard began to grapple with the question in 2012 when her six-year-old daughter Catherine was killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. In the depths of her grief, Hubbard founded an animal sanctuary in Catherine’s memory, creating a place of healing for her family and their community and fulfilling her daughter’s dream. Hubbard’s courageous witness will uplift your faith and demonstrate how Christ’s redemptive suffering provides a path of hope, even in the darkest moments of our lives. Hubbard’s daughter Catherine was a happy little girl who wanted to spend her life rescuing animals. All that changed on the morning of December 14, 2012. Though her daughter’s tragic death marked the end of Hubbard’s world as she’d known it, she instinctively held on to her faith in God, realizing it was the only way she could bear the initial impact of her daughter’s death and the subsequent waves of grief and loss as her marriage ended and she was forced to forge a new life. A typographic mistake on Catherine’s obituary led Hubbard to an unexpected invitation to fulfill her daughter’s dreams of opening an animal shelter. She began to channel her grief into a work of peace by starting a foundation in her daughter’s memory, by writing, and by helping her son recover after surviving the tragedy that took his sister’s life. Ultimately, it was Hubbard’s faith that gave her the courage to entrust her daughter to God and to seek his plan for her own life. “God helped me to look back on my life up to that time and to see all the ways he had been preparing me for what was to come,” she writes. In Finding Sanctuary, Hubbard shares her journey of healing and transformation in order to help those who may be grappling with an inability to trust in the goodness of God. You will Each chapter in the book is dedicated to one step in Hubbard’s journey toward wholeness and includes reflection questions to guide you to consider what God is teaching you as you make your own way toward God’s kingdom of peace.
160 pages, Paperback
Published April 23, 2021
15 people are currently reading
117 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 3, 2021
It seems more than a little strange to call Jennifer Hubbard's "Finding Sanctuary: How the Wild Work of Peace Restored the Heart of a Sandy Hook Mother" a light and breezy read, but doing so likely speaks volumes about the genuine restoration of heart that has taken place for Hubbard in the years since her six-year-old daughter Catherine was killed during the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings on December 14, 2012.
The truth is that "Finding Sanctuary" is an inspirational read, a book that is immersed deeply within Hubbard's Catholic faith and how that faith helped her survive an experience that most human beings can't begin to understand and I'd dare say no human being ever wants to understand or experience.
If you're looking for a book that weaves its way through the Sandy Hook experience, "Finding Sanctuary" will not be that book. Hubbard, at least for the most part, only devotes one chapter of "Finding Sanctuary" to December 14, 2012 and the way in which it unfolded for herself and, to a lesser degree, her son who attended that same school and survived the shooting.
Rather than taking us through the Sandy Hook experience or even through those ever familiar stages of grief, Hubbard provides with "Finding Sanctuary" a peace-seeking glimpse into the deepening of faith that can arrive when one surrenders to Christ's path of hope even in the darkest moments of life.
"Finding Sanctuary" doesn't try to make sense of the senseless, but it does try, and succeeds, to find meaning and hope in surviving that senseless and moving forward with faith, hope, love, and a sense of purpose.
Hubbard fills "Finding Sanctuary" with scriptural references, not from a point of exegesis but from a point of how that scripture pointed her own journey toward God and toward a greater peace in her life. Yet, rest assured that "Finding Sanctuary" never for a single moment glosses over the horrific loss of the animal loving Catherine with such revelations as her bedroom to this day remaining as it was serving as a powerful reminder that while Hubbard has found restoration she is still a mother who embraces her daughter every single day of her life.
As a longtime child advocate and peace activist, I've felt a kinship with the parents and survivors of Sandy Hook largely because my own daughter had been taken on December 14th many years ago. December 14th has long been one of those "red circle" dates on the calendar that I now typically honor with prayer, reflection, and the reverence it deserves as a key date in my life despite the fact that my daughter would now be an adult and likely long gone from my home. I've been asked many times how I maintained my faith given this experience and given other life experiences. The true value, at least for me, of "Finding Sanctuary" is that Hubbard beautifully illustrates and answers that question and leans into it gently yet with poignant vulnerability. I myself feel less alone in having had my faith guide my restoration and my God restore my hope.
As "Finding Sanctuary" winds down, of course, we will learn about the animal sanctuary that now bears Catherine Violet Hubbard's name - a sanctuary that was, interestingly enough, borne out of a typographical error that occurred in Catherine's printed obituary and led to a relationship for Jennifer with a small non-profit of like-minded animal lovers who understood and embraced a bigger vision for honoring Catherine's life and legacy.
"Finding Sanctuary" may not quite be the book that you're expecting it to be, but it's a rather beautiful book of wonder about the healing and transformation that can take place when we entrust every moment of our lives to God from the overwhelming joys to the unfathomable despair.
The truth is that "Finding Sanctuary" is an inspirational read, a book that is immersed deeply within Hubbard's Catholic faith and how that faith helped her survive an experience that most human beings can't begin to understand and I'd dare say no human being ever wants to understand or experience.
If you're looking for a book that weaves its way through the Sandy Hook experience, "Finding Sanctuary" will not be that book. Hubbard, at least for the most part, only devotes one chapter of "Finding Sanctuary" to December 14, 2012 and the way in which it unfolded for herself and, to a lesser degree, her son who attended that same school and survived the shooting.
Rather than taking us through the Sandy Hook experience or even through those ever familiar stages of grief, Hubbard provides with "Finding Sanctuary" a peace-seeking glimpse into the deepening of faith that can arrive when one surrenders to Christ's path of hope even in the darkest moments of life.
"Finding Sanctuary" doesn't try to make sense of the senseless, but it does try, and succeeds, to find meaning and hope in surviving that senseless and moving forward with faith, hope, love, and a sense of purpose.
Hubbard fills "Finding Sanctuary" with scriptural references, not from a point of exegesis but from a point of how that scripture pointed her own journey toward God and toward a greater peace in her life. Yet, rest assured that "Finding Sanctuary" never for a single moment glosses over the horrific loss of the animal loving Catherine with such revelations as her bedroom to this day remaining as it was serving as a powerful reminder that while Hubbard has found restoration she is still a mother who embraces her daughter every single day of her life.
As a longtime child advocate and peace activist, I've felt a kinship with the parents and survivors of Sandy Hook largely because my own daughter had been taken on December 14th many years ago. December 14th has long been one of those "red circle" dates on the calendar that I now typically honor with prayer, reflection, and the reverence it deserves as a key date in my life despite the fact that my daughter would now be an adult and likely long gone from my home. I've been asked many times how I maintained my faith given this experience and given other life experiences. The true value, at least for me, of "Finding Sanctuary" is that Hubbard beautifully illustrates and answers that question and leans into it gently yet with poignant vulnerability. I myself feel less alone in having had my faith guide my restoration and my God restore my hope.
As "Finding Sanctuary" winds down, of course, we will learn about the animal sanctuary that now bears Catherine Violet Hubbard's name - a sanctuary that was, interestingly enough, borne out of a typographical error that occurred in Catherine's printed obituary and led to a relationship for Jennifer with a small non-profit of like-minded animal lovers who understood and embraced a bigger vision for honoring Catherine's life and legacy.
"Finding Sanctuary" may not quite be the book that you're expecting it to be, but it's a rather beautiful book of wonder about the healing and transformation that can take place when we entrust every moment of our lives to God from the overwhelming joys to the unfathomable despair.
February 8, 2021
4 stars
Lovely book about the redemptive and transformative power of suffering—as Viktor Frankl is quoted in the Foreword, “ Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”
After tragically losing her 7-year-old daughter in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the author struggles to bring a semblance of order back to her life. Turning to her faith, she finds solace and understanding in the Bible and her relationship to God. Through journaling, she finds her relationship with God transformed from a distant and largely impersonal one, to a personal and intimate relationship. She finds, over the course of her journaling, that “the Lord God of the first book seems very different from the Lord God of what is now the tenth. And I dare to hope that the Lord God of my twentieth will be a completely different one than my Lord God of today—not because he is different but because I will be different—changed and transformed.”
Moving from a place of fear and anxiety, she recognizes that “fear and anxiety are intended to freeze, and we are not called to be stagnant—stagnant waters have the potential to poison.” She finds purpose in the small things such as packing her son’s lunchbox, realizing that “… when your heart is shattered, curling up in a ball and sleeping your heartbreak away won’t help you nearly so much as getting out of bed and doing the one thing in front of you that you know you can do. And when that one thing is done, do the next thing to be done. Look no further than the next thing. Put one foot in front of the other. This is how your soul is fed with purpose—these seemingly simple actions are the manna that will sustain you on what is going to be a long journey.”
Throughout, the author is able to discern the plan that God has for her life. She moves through various stages of anger, hopelessness, to a position where she is assured of God’s love for her and His abiding presence.
There is very little in the book about the actual events that took place on December 14, 2012. In that sense, the book is universal—less a personal memoir (although it is that) than a message for all who suffer. The author repeatedly refers to her “it”—the event that launched her search for meaning and for God—and acknowledges that everyone has their own “it”. In fact, the book is designed to encourage the reader to ask of themselves the hard questions—at the end of each chapter are several questions to initiate discussion and the book could easily be used by a grief group, etc.
Lovely book about the redemptive and transformative power of suffering—as Viktor Frankl is quoted in the Foreword, “ Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”
After tragically losing her 7-year-old daughter in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the author struggles to bring a semblance of order back to her life. Turning to her faith, she finds solace and understanding in the Bible and her relationship to God. Through journaling, she finds her relationship with God transformed from a distant and largely impersonal one, to a personal and intimate relationship. She finds, over the course of her journaling, that “the Lord God of the first book seems very different from the Lord God of what is now the tenth. And I dare to hope that the Lord God of my twentieth will be a completely different one than my Lord God of today—not because he is different but because I will be different—changed and transformed.”
Moving from a place of fear and anxiety, she recognizes that “fear and anxiety are intended to freeze, and we are not called to be stagnant—stagnant waters have the potential to poison.” She finds purpose in the small things such as packing her son’s lunchbox, realizing that “… when your heart is shattered, curling up in a ball and sleeping your heartbreak away won’t help you nearly so much as getting out of bed and doing the one thing in front of you that you know you can do. And when that one thing is done, do the next thing to be done. Look no further than the next thing. Put one foot in front of the other. This is how your soul is fed with purpose—these seemingly simple actions are the manna that will sustain you on what is going to be a long journey.”
Throughout, the author is able to discern the plan that God has for her life. She moves through various stages of anger, hopelessness, to a position where she is assured of God’s love for her and His abiding presence.
There is very little in the book about the actual events that took place on December 14, 2012. In that sense, the book is universal—less a personal memoir (although it is that) than a message for all who suffer. The author repeatedly refers to her “it”—the event that launched her search for meaning and for God—and acknowledges that everyone has their own “it”. In fact, the book is designed to encourage the reader to ask of themselves the hard questions—at the end of each chapter are several questions to initiate discussion and the book could easily be used by a grief group, etc.
August 3, 2024
This is a beautiful little book written by the mother of one of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Through this tragedy, the author has learned strength in weakness and that the Lord truly sustains His children in the everyday. "It is because of the storms that I have found the peace with which I am sustained." Nobody should ever go through what Jennifer Hubbard did, but she shares her grief, pain and growth that came as a result of this horrible experience in hopes of encouraging others.
July 14, 2022
The message of this book is so needed in our world today.
Jennifer Hubbard writes of her journey through unimaginable grief to an authentic relationship with God.
In a long and arduous path, she retreats into a silent classroom of one, journaling, studying scripture and communing with God. Coming to meet the One who can truly heal, she leaves the classroom and returns to the world, ready to act with purpose.
Highly recommend.
Jennifer Hubbard writes of her journey through unimaginable grief to an authentic relationship with God.
In a long and arduous path, she retreats into a silent classroom of one, journaling, studying scripture and communing with God. Coming to meet the One who can truly heal, she leaves the classroom and returns to the world, ready to act with purpose.
Highly recommend.
April 18, 2022
Incredibly powerful and deeply honest and heart-wrenching read. The author explores how we find meaning and peace in the face of evil. I liked how she wove her life lessons in the short, pithy chapters. And I actually enjoyed working on the questions at the end of the chapters to apply her new-found wisdom to my own life. Beautiful and profound.
May 18, 2021
Finding Sanctuary is a look inside the raw and emotional spiritual journey of Jennifer Hubbard. An everyday mom and wife, her world was knocked upside down when she lost her daughter, Catherine, in the Sandy Hook shooting. Jennifer shows us how she found her faith, gave her pain to God, and let the grief change her for the better. She writes as if speaking to a best friend, who reaches out from her own grief to show us that no matter what our pain is, there is hope and healing. This is a difficult true story to read, and even more difficult to put down. Sad, but encouraging, this book will help strengthen your own journey and remind you that no matter the circumstances God will always reach out and show you the way. (I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher for my honest review.)
June 15, 2021
See my review on the blog.
http://www.soundmindandspirit.com/202...
http://www.soundmindandspirit.com/202...
September 2, 2021
Brave woman for sharing her journey.
December 6, 2021
I love this book as much as I love the author :)
February 24, 2022
I have been reading Jennifer Hubbard's spiritually profound reflections in the Magnificat for years and was so happy she wrote a book. Her spirituality and raw honesty are inspiring.
March 7, 2022
This is a beautifully written book.
May 1, 2022
The powerful faith journey of a Sandy Hook mother.
December 30, 2022
Just beautiful. I want to go back and read this book again and again. Too many powerful messages of Faith to keep in your heart reading through just once.
April 17, 2024
An amazing and heart-wrenching journey with Jenny Hubbard.
July 7, 2022
A poignant book to read after the Uvalde shooting. Her trust in the Lord to walk through the darkest grief one can imagine is inspiring. For me, the things she struggled with in her own walk with the Lord (not regarding the loss of her daughter, just her own spirituality) were not things that I relate to. So I personally didn’t take as much out of the read as I had hoped, but that is just based on us being different people with different relationships with God. I admire Hubbard so, so much and I am so grateful she put her story into a book to inspire all of us to trust even when we cannot see what God is doing.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews