breathing in the whitespace with Bonnie 
Her mind was a fertile breeding ground for the voices of shame. With no positive words to contradict them the voices grew, stronger, louder and more convincing. They were the truth to Linda, the only truth she knew.
By the time Linda was sixteen she had stopped going to school. She followed a boy six years older than her to another city. He treated her roughly, but that felt familiar, and at least he gave her a place to live. She did whatever he asked of her, paid the price for her imperfections and swallowed the pain with the alcohol he had taught her to drink.
When he grew tired of her, he passed her on to a friend who treated her just as badly. She never questioned the abuse convinced it was what she deserved, all she had ever deserved.
She didn't expect her baby son to love her, or the daughter she birthed four years later. She didn't expect anything but trouble and trouble always found her. On her twenty first birthday, with a four year old and an infant she drank herself to sleep after their father walked out for the last time.
The voices sang a familiar song. “No one will ever really care for you because you’ll never be good enough to care about.” Linda believed them, of course. Theirs was the only song she knew. They were the songs she sang to her children like an inside out lullaby.
Linda was broken and alone with both her heart and her body covered with scars. Going home wasn't an option. She had closed the door on that pain and couldn't imagine opening it again. Her children were hungry, the rent would come due soon and she never learned how to do anything that someone would want to pay her for.
She left the kids home alone at night, asking a neighbor to look in on them if she heard noises. She went to the bars down the street, offering herself to anyone who would buy her a drink, taking them back to her place as payment of sorts. She thought herself lucky when one of them would choose to hang around for a month, or two. Some stayed longer, but she never expected that. If they paid the bills she was willing to absorb whatever blows inevitably accompanied the favors.
Linda was too hurt and too lost to think about what harm living that way was inflicting on her son and daughter. She was in survival mode, doing whatever she thought she must. Just like her own mother. Just like always. Day followed day, week after week, and the years piled up one after the other.Brokenness. Shame. Pain. All these abound in the lives of my main characters, just as they do in our own lives. But...
To be broken is the beginning of Revival. It is painful, humiliating, but it is the only way. It is being "Not I, but Christ” (Gal 2:20), and a "C" is a bent "I." The Lord Jesus cannot live in us fully and reveal Himself through until the proud self within us is broken. This simply means that the hard unyielding self, which justifies itself, wants its own way, stands up for its rights, and seeks its own glory, at last bows its head to God's will, admits its wrong, gives up its own way to Jesus, surrenders its rights and discards its own glory - that the Lord Jesus might have all and be all. In other words it is dying to self and self-attitudes.
 |
| image found at http://www.pilgrimscribblings.com |
We are here to submit to His will so that He may work through us what He wants. Once we realize this, He will make us broken bread and poured-out wine with which to feed and nourish others.My life is being ·given as an offering to God [ poured out as a drink offering]
We are often so stuck in invisible struggles in our hearts and minds, we barely have space for God. These deep struggles, these stuck places, are familiar to every one of us: brokenness, anger, discontentment, fear, and sadness. Stuck takes on these struggles within us so that we can encounter God. Because until we recognize that we are stuck and in need of God, we will miss what He has for us.I received a sampler version of the book and a dvd containing small samples from each of the eight sessions.
Jennie Allen's Bible studies are designed to draw women close to God and to each other. These shorter studies dig deep quickly, creating experiential conversations and allowing women to wrestle with Scripture in a deep and authentic way throughout the week.
So my prayer is this study will be a safe place to explore God and your own heart. The state of our hearts and what we believe about God are the two most important things about us.This study is intended to be shared in small groups that create a safe place for women to openly share the things they may have been hiding for years and allow God to begin to bring healing and wholeness to those places inside that are broken.
One last point. Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad mans knows he is not very good; a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping.So then it seems I am getting better
