Grace Poured Out Summary

In Grace Poured Out, author Valerie M. Herndon gives an honest, emotional, and redemptive account of very personal grief and a trial of faith. Herndon can scarcely imagine what’s ahead when she finds out her youngest child, fourteen-year-old Katie, is sick. However, it eventually comes to light that this isn’t only a matter of passing sickness but of life and death. Herndon then has to face what it means to trust and have faith in God when her prayers may not lead to the outcome she’s hoped they would.

Herndon transparently describes the state of her family before Katie’s sickness. With three children and busy schedules, Herndon and her husband, Wes, have practically been living separate lives. Katie’s condition forces the family’s dynamics to shift, and the shift is most powerfully uncovered in the book’s distinctive, thought-provoking ending.

Still, all along the way to that ending, the narrative is
However, I was initially thrown off by the Foreword that comes later. There’s no name given with it to identify who is speaking, though I soon identified the speaker there as Herndon herself. Because forewords are typically written by someone other than the author, it might have been more appropriate to call Herndon’s opening remarks the Preface.

The dragonfly is a fitting symbolic choice for the book’s cover, on account of what dragonflies mean to the author and why. However, as dragonflies aren’t mentioned until more than halfway through the book, I would’ve liked to see something about them earlier on and more than once. Giving the reader more “time” with an important symbol by referring to it in more than one place makes it easier to sense and remember its significance. This also takes into account the people who may only access the book in Braille or in audio form one day and may never physically see the symbolism in the book’s cover