Do you feel rushed, tired, and under pressure? Are you so used to feeling like that that you barely notice? Do you feel that no matter what you do, it’s not enough?Last week I took a break. I went away to Norfolk and stayed in a cottage right out in the country. It was quiet. The skies were big and uninterrupted with buildings, masts and wires. I enjoyed being out in the wind and the sun. I had time to read. I sat and watched the world go by. I took lots of photographs. My soul was soothed. I could just ‘be’.
Many Christian women live their lives behind a mask of ‘being ok’. Already battling society's false expectations of how a woman should look, dress and live, for many, faith simply produces another set of false expectations.
Emily Freeman was a classic Christian ‘good girl’. Cheerful, self-reliant and strong on the outside, she was irrationally angry on the inside when other people believed her facade and didn’t realise the struggles she was going through beneath her bubbly veneer. In Grace for the Good Girl Emily writes: “as day fades to dusk, you begin to feel the familiar fog of anxiety, the weight and pressure of holding it all together, of longing left unmet, of unexplained emptiness even in the midst of great blessing and perceived success.
Sometimes in quiet stillness, I felt an aching that wouldn’t go away, a longing to taste and see, to live authentically free.”
Is there something you are hiding from? If you answer this question honestly, it will reveal what it is you fear. Maybe you are hiding from remembering your past, from facing regret, from what may happen in your future. Maybe you don’t want to be known because you fear people might find out you are stupid or wrong or that you don’t know so much after all. Maybe you are hiding from your dreams because to face them would mean admitting they are there. And to admit that they are there would mean you aren’t living them after all.
Is there something you are hiding behind? When I answer this question, I discover those places where I put my trust. A hiding place is a place where we feel safe, emphasis on feel. I think it is a safe place to hide from the things I fear, so that is why I stay there. Maybe you hide behind your sweet personality, because to be anything other than nice would be offensive or bad or wrong. Maybe you hide behind your list of rules because you think following them is the way to be accepted by God. I hid behind all of these masks and other ones, too.
It is important to know the answers to these questions because only in identifying the lies that trigger certain reactions will we be able to receive the truth we need to replace them. For a long time, I believed I was searching for God and thought I had found him, this God who is order and control, distant and passive. I knew he so loved the world, but I didn’t know his love for me. As I gazed off into the foggy distance, hoping for a glimpse of the outline of his presence, I missed the One who stood beside me, casting his shadow over me as he showered me with his love. While I thought I was searching for him, he graciously, miraculously, and intentionally found me.
There is someone you want to be, and she isn’t a hiding, mask-wearing, fear-filled woman."
Grace for the Good Girl Sample chapter
Price: £8.99
ISBN: 9780800719845
Published by: Revell (Distributed by Lion Hudson)
Available through any good bookshop or online
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment