Grab your favorite drink, get comfortable, and let’s get ready to be encouraged.
As I’ve stated before, my hope is you will be curious and intrigued to the point of checking this book out for yourself. {Also, these are all direct quotes from the book, Captivating by John & Stasi Eldredge.}
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Captivating, Chapter 3 ~ Haunted by a Question
Eve – What Happened?
* (pg 44) Eve was given to the world as the incarnation of a beautiful, captivating God – a life-offering, life-saving lover, a relational specialist, full of tender mercy and hope. Yes, she brought a strength to the world, but not a striving, sharp-edged strength. She was inviting, alluring, captivating.
* Why do so few women have anything close to a life of romance? Loneliness and emptiness are far more common themes – so entirely common that most women buried their longings for romance long ago and are now living merely to survive, get through the week.
* And women are tired. We are drained. But it’s not from a life of shared adventures. No, the weariness of women comes from lives that are crammed with routine, with chores, with hundreds of demands.
* (pg 45) As Chekov said, “Any idiot can face a crisis. It’s the day to day living that wears you out.” Somehow, somewhere between our youth and yesterday, efficiency has taken the place of adventure.
* Most women do not feel they are playing an irreplaceable role in a great Story. Oh, no. We struggle to know if we matter at all. If we are at home, we feel ashamed we don’t have a “real life” in the outside world.
A Woman’s Deepest Question
* Finally, most women doubt very much that they have any genuine beauty to unveil. It is, in face our deepest doubt.
* When it comes to the issues surrounding beauty, we vacillate between striving and resignation … Oh, forget it. Who cares anyway? Put up a shield and get on with life. Hide. Hide in busyness; hide in church activities; hide in depression. There is nothing captivating about me. Certainly not inside me. I’ll be lucky to pull it off on the outside.
* (pg 46) You see, every little girl – and every little boy – is asking one fundamental question. But they are very different questions, depending on whether you are a little boy or a little girl.
~ Little boys want to know, Do I have what it takes? … He was made in the image of a warrior God. Nearly all a man does is fueled by his search for validation, that longing he carries for an answer to his Question.
~ Little girls want to know, Am I lovely? The twirling skirts, the dress up, the longing to be pretty and to be seen – that is what that’s all about. We are seeking an answer to our Question.
* Nearly all a woman dos in her adult life is fueled by her longing to be delighted in, her longing to be beautiful, to be irreplaceable to have her Question answered, “Yes!”
The Fall of Eve
* (pg 47) {Gen. 3:1-6 NLT} The woman was convinced. … Convinced that God was holding out on her. Convinced that she could not trust his heart toward her. Convinced that in order to have the best possible life, she must take matters into her own hands. And so she did.
* (pg 48) In disobeying God she also violated her very essence. Eve is supposed to be Adam’s ezer kenegdo, like one who comes to save. She is to bring him life, invite him to life. Instead, she invited him to his death.
* Now, to be fair, Adam doesn’t exactly ride to her rescue.
~ “He denied his very nature and went passive. And every man after him… carries in his heart now the same failure… We won’t risk, we won’t fight, and we won’t rescue Eve. We truly are a chip off the old block. (Wild at Heart)”
* We are often enchanted, like Eve, so easily falling prey to the lies of our Enemy. Having forfeited our confidence in God, we believe that in order to have the life we want, we must take matters into our own hands. And we ache with an emptiness nothing seems able to fill.
The Curse
* Man is cursed with futility and failure. Life is going to be hard for a man now in the place he will feel it most. Failure is a man’s worst fear.
* (pg 50) Woman is cursed with loneliness (relational heartache), with the urge to control (especially her man), and with the dominance of men (which is not how things were meant to be, and we are not saying it is a good thing – it is the fruit of the fall and a sad fact of history).
* There is an emptiness in us that we continually try to feed. And can’t you see how much you need to have things under your control – whether it’s a project or a ministry or a marriage? Are you comfortable trusting your well-being to someone else?
* Most women hate their vulnerability.
* We are not inviting – we are guarded. Most of our energy is spent trying to hide our true selves, and control our worlds to have some sense of security.
* When a woman falls from grace, what is most deeply marred is her tender vulnerability, beauty that invites to life. She becomes a dominating, controlling woman – or a desolate, needy, mousy woman. Or some odd combination of both, depending on her circumstances.
Dominating women
* (pg 51) She needs no one. She is in charge – “on top of things constantly.”
* She is a woman who knows how to get what she wants. (Some of us might even admire that!)
* But consider this – there is nothing merciful about her, nothing tender, and certainly nothing vulnerable. She has forsaken essential aspects of her femininity.
* (pg 52) Fallen Eve controls her relationships. She refuses to be vulnerable. And if she cannot secure her relationships, then she kills her heart’s longing for intimacy so that she will be safe and in control.
* “Whatever is not from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23 NKJV). That self-protective way of relating to others has nothing to do with real loving, and nothing to do with deeply trusting God. It is our gut-level response to a dangerous world.
* Now, this is not to say a woman can’t be strong. What we are saying is that far too many women forfeit their femininity in order to feel safe and in control.
* (pg 53) Controlling women are those of us who don’t trust anyone else to drive our cars. Or help in our kitchens. Or speak at our retreats or our meetings…We plan perfect birthday parties for our children.
* It might look as though we’re simply “trying to be a good mom,” or a good friend, but what we often do is arrange other people’s lives.
* Controlling women tend to be very well rewarded in this fallen world of ours.
* We have never considered that by living a controlling and domineering life, we are really refusing to trust our God.
* And it has also never dawned on us that something precious in us is lost. Something the world needs very much from us.
Desolate Women
* If on the one side of the spectrum we find that Fallen Eve becomes hard, rigid, and controlling, then on the other side you find women who are desolate, needty, far too vulnerable.
* She is naïve, lost, bereft of any sense of self. She falls under the abuse of a bad man and hasn’t the will to get herself out.
* Take out the abusive situations and you have a woman like Marianne in Sense and Sensibility, who is far too willing to give herself over to an untrustworthy man.
* (pg 54) She is desperate to be loved. And she ends up heartbroken.
* Desolate women are ruled by the aching abyss within them. … They are consumed by a hunger for relationship.
* Sadly, desolate women also tend to hide their true selves. We are certain that if others really knew us, they wouldn’t like us – and we can’t risk the loss of a relationship.
* (pg 56) Hiding women are those of us who never speak up at a Bible study or PTA council or any kind of meeting.
* We stay busy at family gatherings and parties we can’t avoid.
* We dismiss every compliment. We relinquish major decisions to others.
* We hide our truest selves and offer only what we believe is wanted, what is safe. We act in self-protective ways and refuse to offer what we truly see, believe, and know.
* We will not risk rejection or looking like a fool. We have spoken in the past and been met with blank stares and mocking guffaws. We will not do it again. We hide because we are afraid. We have been wounded and wounded deeply.
* We don’t return to our God with our broken and desperate hearts. And it has never occurred to us that in all our hiding, something precious is also lost – something the world needs from us so very, very much.
Indulging
* Whether we tend to dominate and control, or withdraw in our desolation and hide, still…the ache remains. The deep longings in our hearts as women just won’t go away. And so we indulge.
* (pg 57) We buy ourselves something nice when we aren’t feeling appreciated. … We move into a fantasy world to find some water for our thirsty hearts. Romance novels (a billion-dollar industry), soap operas, talk shows, gossip, the myriads of women’s magazines all fee an inner life of relational dreaming and voyeurism that substitutes – for a while – for the real thing.
* But none of these really satisfy, and so we find ourselves trying to fill the remaining emptiness with our little indulgences (we call them “bad habits”). Brent Curtis calls them our “little affairs of the heart.” They are what we give our hearts away to instead of giving them to the heart of God.
* Take a moment and consider yours. Where do you go instead of God when the ache of your heart begins to make itself known?
* (pg 58) We need not be ashamed that our hearts ache; that we need and thirst and hunger for much more. All of our hearts ache. All of our hearts are at some level unsatisfied and longing. It is our insatiable need for more that drives us to our God.
* What we need to see is that all our controlling and our hiding, all our indulging, actually serves to separate us from our hearts. We lose touch with those longings that make us women. And the substitutes never, ever resolve the deeper issue of our souls.
Eve’s Lingering Fear
* Every woman knows now that she is not what she was meant to be. And she fears that soon it will be known – if it hasn’t already been discovered – and that she will be abandoned.
* That is a woman’s worst fear – abandonment.
* (pg 59) And down in the depths of our hearts, our Question remains. Unanswered.
* We do not first bring our heart’s Question to God, and too often, before we can, we are given answers in a very painful way. We are wounded into believing horrid things about ourselves. And so every woman comes into the world set up for a terrible heartbreak.
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How about you?
“Where do you go instead of God when the ache
of your heart begins to make itself known? (page 57)”
Disclaimer: I have not been compensated for anything in this post.
“Where do you go instead of God when the ache
of your heart begins to make itself known? (page 57)”
Disclaimer: I have not been compensated for anything in this post.