Behind Nevertheless
Nevertheless: Finding Hope in Suffering began with years of living, teaching, studying, writing, and returning to a difficult question: What does hope look like when the thing causing your suffering does not go away?
Author Beth Madison knows that question personally. A soil scientist and professor, she has lived with chronic illness, cancer, child loss, and circumstances she could neither fix nor escape. Nevertheless is a devotional memoir written not from the safe distance of suffering resolved, but from within an ongoing story.
Eventually, Beth realized that what she wanted to offer readers could not fit comfortably into a single book.
And so a book became a project.
One Book Was Too Much
Beth had been pondering, reading, taking notes, and writing pieces of what would become Nevertheless for years. Some of the ideas had even been “beta tested,” as she describes it, while speaking to different audiences.
But the people she hoped to reach affected the form the project would eventually take.
“I realized that readers needed a lot of ideas and information in an easier-to-receive, easier-to-understand format of small pieces that work together instead of one big book that could be intimidating,” Beth explains. “Readers dealing with grief, pain, and loss need quickly accessible hope and encouragement for now and in different modes.”
For some, even reading may be difficult.
Someone living with illness or pain may not have the concentration to sit with a book for long. Another person may be lying in bed, sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, or receiving treatment.
Beth realized that video and audio could reach people in those moments differently.
That insight helped shape what became The Nevertheless Project, a broader collection of resources built around the central truth Beth returns to throughout the project:
There’s always hope because there’s always Jesus.
Some Things Need to Be Read. Others Need to Be Said.
Deciding what belonged in the book and what belonged in video was not simply a matter of dividing the material.
Beth considered how people receive ideas.
“Some ideas are better ‘said’ in verbal form where I can visually and verbally explain in memorable ways,” she says. “Other ideas are better processed in sentences which can stand on their own so the user can absorb them and sit with them awhile.”
Her years as a teacher also shaped that approach.
After more than thirty years of teaching in different settings, Beth has learned that people do not all learn the same way. So Nevertheless intentionally offers more than one way to interact with its central ideas.
“I use three modes of learning,” she explains: “reading, visual, and touch.”
Readers encounter the material through the book. They see and hear it developed in the videos. They also interact physically with objects and reflection exercises connected to the teaching.
“Each piece reinforces the same truths in ways for different folks with different learning styles and different aspects of pain, grief, and loss for gaining hope.”
One of those physical objects is particularly important: a bowl.
The Bowl That Was Supposed to Be Thrown Away
The bowl featured on the cover of Nevertheless and used in the videos was not created as a marketing prop. Beth had owned it for years.
An artist friend had made the bowl but was preparing to throw it away because it leaked. Beth rescued it because she still thought it was beautiful.
Eventually, she recognized something of herself in it. The bowl, she says, represented her own life in “pain, grief, and loss.”
“I was ‘leaky,’” Beth says. “Yet to God I was still beautiful and useful, but for different purposes now than before all this started.”
Pain and loss had changed what she could do. But, like the bowl, being unable to fulfill one particular purpose did not mean she no longer had value or purpose at all.
The rescued bowl became part of the visual language of Nevertheless. So did the smooth black stones associated with it. The stones give readers something tangible to hold as they reflect, pray, and remember God’s presence. For Beth, that practice is not merely something she created for readers.
“I sometimes carry around a black smooth stone in my pocket and rub on it as a stress releaser during especially challenging parts of the day,” she says. “Sometimes the stone becomes a reminder to listen rather than speak. Sometimes it accompanies a prayer for the strength to face whatever comes next.”
A Second Book, in Smaller Pieces
A second book, Letters to Sarah, is scheduled for release in 2027. It will take what Beth has learned about suffering and present it in another form.
Beth describes the book as “a written-out real-world place” where she can take what she has learned about suffering and make it useful in short letters from one friend to another.
The letters offer hope, encouragement, and perspective in brief pieces that can be received in everyday moments.
Beth compares them to “sweet swipes of truth with love,” small tastes that complement the fuller substance of the first book and videos.
The formats differ, but they are not competing resources. They reinforce one another.
The book gives readers room to read and reflect. Video allows Beth to communicate ideas personally and visually. The bowl, stones, and exercises make some of those ideas physical. When Letters to Sarah releases in 2027, it will return to those truths in brief, accessible reminders.
Together, they reflect something Beth has learned across decades of teaching: important truths sometimes need to reach us in more than one way before they become part of how we live.
Hope Without an Easy Ending
Perhaps the hardest challenge in developing Nevertheless was also the reason for developing it. There is a significant difference between offering hope and promising that the problem will go away.
“There’s a fine line between recognizing the without-end of all this and trusting God as good in all this,” Beth says. “I can’t do even one day on my own. Yet, I know God can do anything in and through me in his sufficiency. My emotions and strength are weak and fragile, but hope in Jesus is steadfast and strong.”
That may be one reason repetition is so important throughout The Nevertheless Project. Some truths do not become deeply rooted because we hear them once. “Truths like that aren’t easily learned but need constant cultivation,” Beth says. For her, that is another reason to create multiple resources: to continue putting the same foundational truth before people whose present circumstances are difficult and whose future may look harder still.
Something to Return To
A person living through ongoing suffering does not necessarily need one profound answer delivered once.
Sometimes we need something we can read.
Sometimes we need something we can hear.
Sometimes we need something we can hold in our hand.
And sometimes we need the same truth offered to us again tomorrow.
Beth knows that another person’s grief, illness, or loss may look very different from her own. But that does not make what she has learned hers alone.
“The comfort and hope I’ve received from my Jesus isn’t just for me,” she says. “It’s available to anyone who is longing to be seen in his or her grief, pain, or loss.”
Her final words are simple:
“Jesus knows. Jesus cares. And so do I.”
And beneath every part of The Nevertheless Project remains the truth Beth has returned to again and again:
There’s always hope because there’s always Jesus.
Nevertheless: Finding Hope in Suffering by Dr. Beth Madison is the first book in The Nevertheless Project, a multi-format resource created for Christian women living through significant, ongoing, or life-altering suffering.
