David C Cook author succumbs to breast cancer at 38

Less than a week after her book The Hardest Peace was named as a Christian Book Award finalist, David C Cook author Kara Tippetts, 38, died after a long battle with breast cancer on Sunday, March 22.

The author of two books including Big Love, David C Cook approached Tippetts about writing The Hardest Peace after she was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic cancer. The book has had a huge impact on many lives, including her own.

“Writing The Hardest Peace proved to be a gift,” Tippetts said on her blog, mundanefaithfulness.com, earlier this year. “The writing of this book helped me through the diagnosis of cancer and it finding more and more corners of my body: my brain, my bones, my liver, my lymph system. The writing of this book caused me to look at my story and see the grace to walk this hard path with cancer.

“This is not simply my story and journey with cancer. It is a book written to appeal to us all as we meet the bitter edges of life on this side of eternity. In the brokenness of our unmet expectations of life, will we look for Jesus and His abundant love, or will we tumble into bitterness and anger that leave us utterly self-focused and disappointed by he hard in our story each of us are asked to receive?”

In a released statement, David C Cook officials relayed their gratitude in working with Tippetts.

“We at David C Cook are thankful for the blessing of sharing Kara Tippetts’ words of grace, hope, and healing over the past year. We are deeply grateful we were able to share time with Kara and to learn from her most incredible love for and relationship with our Lord. Throughout Kara’s incredible journey, her expression of faith inspired thousands.  It is our prayer that Kara’s legacy lives on in the hearts and minds of each of us for years to come.”

In The Hardest Peace, Tippetts doesn’t offer answers for when living is hard, but she asks us to join her in moving away from fear and control and toward peace and grace. Most of all, she draws us back to the God who is with us, in the mundane and the suffering, and who shapes even our pain into beauty.