These two books are linked by a common author, Michael Wenham, an Anglican priest. He has never met Jozanne Moss, only communicated by email. There is a CMF link, as they were introduced by Peter Saunders.

What the authors have in common is that both are living through the progressively disabling and ultimately fatal condition of Motor Neurone Disease (MND). Both books contain honest, moving accounts of this experience and the interplay between it and the authors' Christian faith.

In My Donkey Body Wenham tells his own story of disease onset, diagnosis and progression. He tells it straightforwardly with gentle humour, tackling along the way an array of challenging issues including his personal relationship with God, maintaining faith in the power of prayer that yet does not bring about healing, and his approach to the ongoing push to legalise assisted suicide when many would see him as a prime example of a person who might 'benefit' from it.

Wenham's contribution to I Choose Everything (a quotation from St Therese of Lisieux, who died aged 24 from tuberculosis) is also informed by his experience of MND but takes the form of theological counterpoints to Jozanne Moss' description of her own journey.

Her MND began when she was only in her thirties, a mother of two young children, and is moving faster than his.

She too tells the story of her physical deterioration and the frustrations and fears it brings about, as well as the intense sadness of realising she will not live to see her children grow up. Yet at the book's recent launch in her home town in South Africa, Jozanne said: 'This book is not about me or my illness, but about God's faithfulness and love to us as a family'. And it is.

Filtered through their different characters and circumstances both authors show how, despite everything, they remain convinced of God's love in Jesus Christ, and perceive their own and their families' needs met through that love, shown in small, unexpected but numerous ways.

Michael and Jozanne's stories deserve to be read by health and social care workers but also by any Christian who has ever contemplated disabling or terminal illness and thought: 'I wonder how I would cope it that were me…?' Nigel Sykes is a consultant in palliative medicine at St Christopher's Hospice