Published June 2026
Stories written in the middle.
Memoirs and stories about love, suffering, faith, and what remains when life no longer feels certain.
Memoirs and stories about love, suffering, faith, and what remains when life no longer feels certain.
Words We Never Wanted Left Unsaid
Print ISBN 978-1-0483-1301-7 eBook ISBN 978-1-0483-1302-4
Illustrated Bible Stories for Children Facing Illness, Fear and Loss
Print ISBN 978-1-0483-1303-1 eBook ISBN 978-1-0483-1304-8
These books are written in hope. Written in fear. Written in love.
Where Are You, God? — Story Video · Illustrated Bible Stories — Story Video
These books don’t promise easy answers.
It offers company.
Honest words from the pages — about love, faith, suffering, and the things we leave behind.
I can hear my wife sobbing in the bedroom.
It is a Friday afternoon in April. The Monday is a public holiday, the long weekend has just begun. I am at the dining room table when it begins. She is at the other end of the house, and her grief comes down the hallway in waves.
I do not move. My hands are on the table. The cloth under them is cold.
This is the same table where she sat with Daniel the night before and did his homework…
— From the Prologue, The Page We Missed
It was not the crying I have heard before. I have heard her cry in the hospital the night after her lung biopsy, when I sat beside her bed in ICU. I have heard her cry after scans. I have heard her cry in the middle of the night when she thought I was asleep.
I have heard her cry at funerals. I have heard her cry over the small, ordinary hurts of life that build up over time. I have heard her cry because she missed her mother. I have not heard this.
This is the sound of a woman grieving the mother she can no longer be.
— From the Prologue, The Page We Missed
The first book was about what happens to a marriage and to a faith when the prognosis arrives in October and the chemotherapy begins in March. This one is about the family that existed before that, and the family that continues to exist around it, and the things we would like our sons to carry into the rest of their lives.
We are writing this book because the boys are young.
We are writing it because, on more than one occasion, Lynn has said to me, in a voice she does not use for anything else:
The boys are so young. If I die now, they will not remember me.
I have promised her, every time, that I will not let that happen. This book is one of the ways I am keeping that promise.
— From the Preface, Why We Are Writing This
These are not stories of answers. They are stories of showing up. Of holding on. Of loving anyway.
It deeply touched me, a labour of love that comes across as respectful, raw, matter of fact and not demanding of anything from the reader, other than empathy and or connection for and with a fellow man trying to make sense of a non sensical world.
To be this vulnerable, this open, this honest… takes a kind of courage most never see. So proud of you two for sharing your story.
To a devoted husband, Michael, your love for your wife and your children will become a bridge between the past and the future. Through your words and your memories, their mother will continue to walk beside them as they grow.
Michael Janse van Rensburg is a husband to Lynn and a father to TJ and Daniel. These books were not written from distance or hindsight, but from inside a season none of them chose.
He holds a Doctor of Theology from the University of the Western Cape, awarded in 2024 for a dissertation exploring suffering, faith, and the question of how a good God can still be present in a world that hurts. At the time, those questions were academic. A year later, they became deeply personal.
When Lynn's sarcoma returned in 2025, sixteen years after she had first been treated and declared clear, the family's world shifted. Out of that upheaval came these books, written in an attempt to hold together what suffering was trying to pull apart, to honour the woman at the centre of their lives, and to leave behind words their sons can one day hold in their hands.
These books are not about having the answers. They are about showing up — when the answers don't come.
Before there were books, there was Lynn.
A wife. A mother. The quiet centre of a family built over nearly two decades of marriage, ordinary routines, shared laughter, school lunches, late-night conversations, road trips, prayers, disappointments, and the thousand small moments that slowly become a life together.
These pages exist because she exists.
Not as a symbol of suffering, but as a deeply loved woman whose presence shaped the emotional world these books were written from. Much of what fills these pages, the tenderness, the grief, the fear, the humour, the longing to remember, began with the life Michael and Lynn built together long before illness entered the room.
When cancer returned, one of Lynn's deepest fears was not death itself, but being forgotten by the boys while they were still young. Letters to Our Boys grew from that fear, but even more from love, the desire that TJ and Daniel would always know who their mother was, how deeply she loved them, and how present she remained in the middle of uncertainty.
These books are, in many ways, a record of a marriage, of loving someone not only in the beautiful chapters of life, but also in the frightening ones.
Because stories can carry what we cannot.
Because honesty is its own form of faith.
Because love deserves to be remembered.
“I wrote these books for Lynn. I wrote them for our boys. And I wrote them for anyone who has ever loved someone through the unknown.”
A quiet way to stay close to the journey behind the books.
An occasional, unhurried note, new excerpts, reflections on the writing, and word when each book becomes available.
“These books are being written in real time, in the middle of uncertainty and love. If you'd like to follow the journey, I'd be honoured to have you alongside us. — Michael Janse van Rensburg
Be the first to read new excerpts from Where Are You, God? and Letters to Our Boys.
Occasional reflections on writing, family, faith, and the questions we continue to live with.
A quiet word here as each memoir becomes ready to read.
Whether you have a question, a kind word, or simply want to say hello — your message is always welcome.
These books come from a very personal place.
Messages are read by Michael, and we do our best to respond personally.
Thank you for being part of this journey.
Thank you for caring enough to reach out. It means more than you know.