Categories: uncategorized
Date: 03 April 2007 00:44:24
I told someone I would post my review of the book on here so they could read it, but I currently cant find it, but here is what I found on my old blog. Sometime I wrote just after I had read the book, at the beginning of August. Its interesting reading back to things I have written. What I have written below was also the entry before the week that turned the world upside down again when my Gran was taken gravely ill, and we took on the death vigil. Amazingly she didn't die. Anyway, this is what I wrote ...
EDITED TO ADD: after reading this myself, its just astounded me how something I wrote 8 months ago, could still be so apt and real for me now.
"Tuesday, August 08, 2006
captivating?
"The message of Captivating is this: Your heart matters more than anything else
in all creation. The desires you had as a little girl and the longing you still
feel as a woman - they are telling you of the life God created you to live. He offers to
come now as the Hero of your story, to rescue your heart and release you to live
as a fully alive and feminine woman. A woman who is truly captivating"
Taken from the back page of "Captivating" - the book by John and Stasi Eldredge.
yeah right. Thats what I thought, and continued thinking as I very skeptically began reading this book. And I wouldnt quite feel that I am a captivating woman just yet, however, I have to admit that the book has certainly lived up to its title. Captivating? Yes. Its a captivating book.
(sorry for the hugely overuse of that word there!)
Lets start at the beginning. I dont tend to go in for the "self help, be a good christian" books. And there are plenty of them out there. I have plenty of them on my book shelf to. Mostly unread and untouched. Something about many of them that I just havnt been able to read/engage with. I dont know why. I wish I could. I stopped buying books for a while, with the promise to only buy a new one ONCE I had read all the unreads on the self.
I love to read. I love to curl up with a good book, and take myself out of the real world for an hour. I love nothing more than reading a book I feel glad to be reading. Feel good fiction books. Novels. The last couple of years I have been getting my head about reading christian walk books. Some amazing ones out there. However, the selfhelp books, just dont seem to help.
I dont know whether this one is described as a self help anyway, but its certainly held my interest, and started me off on a journey that I never really thought about much before. A journey of reflection and thinking, and some heartsearching times.
As I read this book so much spoke out to me. So much spoke into me. And I find it unreal that I am sitting here writing about it. It has made an impact on me. I have had the great opportunity to take time out the last couple of weeks. To attend a conference type thing, and to go on retreat. To spend some time with some quality christians. To spend some time with some quality people, resting, chatting, praying, reading. God has been breathing some new air into my life, and soul, and its come at a very much needed and well timed time. Things havnt maybe been how one would expect, but then as someone said to be the other day, Gods way isnt always the expected one is it? So true. The ways I was expecting God to speak to me He didnt, and the ways I had never even thought about, well that was how He did.
The last couple of months have been eye opening, and God revealing for me, and for many reasons I can safely say that the summer of 2006 is going to be remembered for some time to come. By me anyway.
I am grateful for the people willing to to step out and walk the journey with me that I have started to walk lately. For people willing to support, and pray, and be there. It is not going to be an easy one, but I think its one I am ready to make, and willing to attempt. Thankyou to those willing people, who have known me for years and willing to stand by with me, but to those who may have only known me for a short time to but still willing. I appreciate it. Muchly.
This journey is one that I know is a right one. One that I hope will eventually bring healing to alot of issues. It isnt going to be easy, and I thankyou the people who are willing to stand by and admit that, instead of airbrushing it and trying to soften the reality.
I am currently in an interchange mode. I have moved on from one year, which in many ways has been incredibly high and amazing, but in others very low and sad also. I am moving on from that year, into another, with a "job/placement" that I adore, and love and assurance that God has put me in the place He wants me to be in. For now anyway. That is good. I am exciting about having my holidays and then heading back to work. To see what it will bring.
I am scared about this personal journey, but maybe in a very small way, excited to. Make sense? Maybe, maybe not. I dont know. Excited because what if, some how I really discover maybe I am captivating. Maybe , just maybe it can happen. Maybe just maybe it can happen that I realise alot of things that maybe right now I dont.
I dont know. We'll see .. "