Warning, I don’t want to deter you from reading, but I don’t want you to be unprepared before you start reading either: This chapter can be a bit hard to digest in parts. Also, this post is long. As usual, my hope and prayer is that you will choose to read the book on your own.
Reading this book makes me even more aware of the hurts I unintentionally inflict on my children by my actions. It is only by the Grace of God if I manage teach them to keep God as their focus and not accept the lies that may come as a result of my actions. Many of the following statements would make more sense if you were to read the book in its entirety.
When I was reading this book, a wise counselor friend said to me, “This is a time of grieving and that’s OK, but don’t get stuck here. No matter how good or bad your childhood was – it would not have been enough. Our hearts were meant for heaven and that longing will never be fulfilled here on earth. Don’t get bogged down, keep reading.”
Captivating
Chapter 4 – Wounded
* (pg 61) She knew that her father cherished her. She was his princess. He was her knight in shining armor. He wanted to spend time with her. Carrie knew her mother loved her and wanted her. Hers was a world where her father protected her, her mother nurtured her, and she was enjoyed. This is the soil a girl’s soul was meant to grow in; this was the garden her young heart was meant to flourish within. Every little girl should be so loved, so welcomed – seen, known, treasured. From this place she can become a strong and beautiful and confident woman.
If only that was how it was for all of us.
Mothers, Fathers, and Their Daughters
* For many centuries women lived in close fellowship with other women – gathering at the well, down by the river, preparing meals – many occasions for femininity to just sort of naturally pass from older women to younger women.
* Nowadays those opportunities are nearly gone.
* The home is the only place left for this vital transmission of feminine identity.
* Women learn from their mothers what it means to be a woman, and from their fathers the value that a woman has – the value they have as a woman.
* (pg 62) From our mothers we receive many, many things, but foremost among them are mercy and tenderness.
* Moms are a bit of a mystery to young girls but also belong to a club that one day they will join.
* So little girls watch and learn. Little girls learn how to live as women by watching their mothers, their grandmothers, and taking in a myriad of lessons from all the adult women in their lives.
* But as for our Question – that is primarily answered by our fathers.
* Little girls need the tender strength of their fathers.
* They need to know that their daddies are strong and will protect them; they need to know that their fathers are for them. Above all, a little girl learns the answer to her Question from her father.
* (pg 63) But Adam fell, as did Eve, and the fathers and mothers most of us had continued the sad story. They did not provide the things our hearts needed in order to become lovely, vulnerable, strong, adventurous women. No, most of our stories share a different theme.
Wounded Hearts
* (pg 64) Abusive fathers are a too common horror. Accomplices, broken mothers are a painful reality. Both of them often come from abusive homes where the cycle of pain is ruthlessly repeated and passed down.
* You cannot be alive very long without being wounded.
* Broken hearts cannot long be avoided in this beautiful yet dangerous world we live in.
* We are not living in the world our souls were made for.
* (pg 65) Sorrow is not a stranger to any of us, though a few have learned that it is not our enemy either.
Passive Fathers
* As I said earlier, fallen men tend to sin in one of two ways. Either they become driven, violent men – their strength gone bad – or they become passive, silent men (like Adam) – their strength gone away.
* (pg 66) Affairs and divorces strike at a woman’s worst fear – abandonment. They wound, not just the mothers, but the daughters as well.
* But she learned to hide her heart from him.
* So many girls learned something like this. Hide your vulnerability. Hide your heart. You aren’t safe.
* But like too many men, my dad worked long hours to provide for us financially and yet withheld the thing we needed most? himself.
* When he was present physically, he was absent emotionally, preferring the company of the television and a glass of scotch to his family.
Mothers wounds
* (pg 68) The stories of these women and the wounds they received as little girls are all different, but the effects of their wounds and the effects of ours are painfully similar.
* What was your childhood like? What lessons did you learn as a little girl?
The Messages of Our Wounds – and How They Shaped Us
* The wounds that we received as young girls did not come alone. They brought messages with them, messages that struck at the core of our hearts, right in the place of our Question.
* Our wounds strike at the core of our femininity. The damage done to our feminine hearts through the wounds we received is made much worse by the horrible things we believe about ourselves as a result.
* If we were overwhelmed or belittled or hurt or abused, we believed that somehow it was because of us – the problem was with us.
* (pg 69) The message? “Your desire for relationship causes pain. You are just ‘too much.’”
* We can’t put words to it, but down deep we fear there is something terribly wrong with us.
* We can’t help but believe that if we were different, if we were better, then we would have been loved as we so longed to be. It must be us.
* (pg 70) She’s settled for the persona of the “competent and efficient professional woman,” kind but guarded, never too attractive and never, ever, in need and never “weak.”
* The vows we make as children are very understandable – and very, very damaging. They shut our hearts down. They are essentially a deep-seated agreement with the messages of our wounds.
* It’s taken a lot of years for me to sort through the wounds and messages that shaped my life. It’s been a journey for growing clarity, understanding, and healing.
* (pg 73) The vows we make and the things we do as a result of our wounds only make matters worse.
Wounded Femininity
* As a result of the wounds we receive growing up, we come to believe that some part of us, maybe every part of us, is marred.
* Shame enters in and makes its crippling home deep within our hearts. Shame is what makes us look away, so we avoid eye contact with strangers and friends.
* Shame is that feeling that haunts us, the sense that if someone really knew us, they would shake their heads in disgust and run away. Shame makes us feel, no, believe, that we do not measure up – not to the world’s standards, the church’s standards, or our own.
* We know we are not all that we long to be, all that God longs for us to be, but instead of coming up for grace-filled air and asking God what he thinks of us, shame keeps us pinned down and gasping, believing that we deserve to suffocate.
* Shame says we are unworthy, broken, and beyond repair.
* (pg 74) Shame causes us to hide.
* We are afraid of being truly seen, and so we hide our truest selves and offer only what we believe is wanted.
* Shame makes us feel very uncomfortable with our beauty.
* Women are beautiful, every single one of us. It is one of the glorious ways that we bear the image of God.
An Unholy Alliance
* Over the years we’ve come to see that the only thing more tragic than the things that have happened to us is what we have done with them.
* We accepted a twisted view of ourselves. And from that we chose a way of relating to our world.
* We made a vow never to be in that place again. We adopted strategies to protect ourselves from being hurt again.
* A woman who is living out of a broken, wounded heart is a woman who is living a self-protective life. She may not be aware of it, but it is true. It’s our way of trying to “save ourselves.”
* We also developed ways of trying to get something of the love our hearts cried out for.
* (pg 75) The ache is there. Our desperate need for love and affirmation, our thirst for some taste of romance and adventure and beauty is there.
* All this adds up to the women we are today. Much of what we call our “personalities” is actually the mosaic of our choices for self-protection plus our plan to get something of the love we were created for.
* The problem is our plan has nothing to do with God.
* From Eve we received a deep mistrust in the heart of God toward us. Clearly, he’s holding out on us. We’ll just have to arrange for the life we want. We will control our world. But there is also an ache deep within, an ache for intimacy and for life. We’ll have to find a way to fill it. A way that does not require us to trust anyone, especially God. A way that will not require vulnerability.
* The wounds you have received have come to you for a purpose from one who knows all you are meant to be and fears you.
How about you?
“What was your childhood like? What lessons did you learn as a little girl? (page 68)”
Based on the lessons you learned as a little girl,
does the plan you made have anything to do with God?
Disclaimer: I have not been compensated for anything in this post. All quotes are taken from Captivating by John & Stasi Eldredge. Page numbers where the quotes are listed are at the beginning of one quote, all quotes following until the next page number is listed are from the same page.