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General Discussion / Chapter 1: Kristin
« Last post by jjveale on March 21, 2012, 05:43:57 pm »1. How did theme(s) of this chapter touch you personally?
This chapter opened some wounds that I often struggle to ignore. I don’t have children so it is difficult to identify with her with the loss of a child. However, I have asked myself the same types of questions and experienced the same doubt I don’t know how many times. I struggled with fear all my life. Paralyzing fear. For reasons that I am still dealing with, I always saw life as full of wonderful and amazing things that would always be taken away from you at a moments notice because you were not worthy of them to begin with. I grew up in a Christian home and knew instinctively that God is good. But inside I think I thought that God was good only to good little boys and girls and I did not believe I was one of them. If I was a good girl then why did those bad things happen to me when I was little? If I was good then why did that horrible trend continue through my teens years and into my adult life? If God loves me so much why can’t I love myself? Why can't I do the things that I know I should do? Why do I sabotage myself with sin? How can I trust God when terrible things keep happening when I do let go?
And worst of all, does thinking all this and wondering mean I am not a Christian and am destined for hell?
2. Direct our attention to at least one quote – why did this stand out to you?
“If I’m ruthlessly honest, I may have said yes to God, yes to Christianity, but really, I have lived the no.” (pg. 10) In being equally honest with myself, this sentence sums up my spiritual life to date. I think for me, Christianity has been a social thing. I always felt more connected when I could share my faith with a group. But the moment I was on my own, the doubt and fear would set in. I thought when I was younger this was because I just didn’t know how to be a Christian and needed others to teach me how to be one. I recognize now that the groups I was in served two purposes for me. I wanted those groups to give me the feeling of acceptance and love that I was desperately seeking. If that didn’t work, they served as a distraction. When I was surrounded by people, I didn’t have to think about all the things about myself that I hated and all the things I was afraid of.
“Just that maybe… maybe you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a different ending holds.” (pg. 14) This hit me hard. I spend a large part of my life wishing things were different. I lost hours and days daydreaming about how different my life could be “if only”. It was only a year or so ago that I began to look at life realizing that, if even one event had been different, the outcome would have been vastly affected. My life right now is an incredible blessing. It has been a very difficult road getting here but I am learning to be very thankful for all of it, even the horrific moments. After all, if those things had not happened, I would not be where I am today. It reminds me to continue to be thankful for everything at all times
3. Do you think Voskamp is being realistic in challenging us to live an “empty, full” life? Does that make sense to you? Why or why not?
Trusting that completely scares the living daylights out of me. Trusting someone else means I could be wrong in my choice. It would mean another failure or another loss. Failure and loss are terrifying. So terrifying that in the past, I would rather not to anything at all than fail at something. While that part of me has grown and improved, the fear is still there. Losing something I love is even worse. I am often afraid that trusting God means automatically losing what I love. I become afraid and the fear paralyzes so I do nothing. I simply exist.
4. Did you disagree with anything in the chapter? Why?
I’ve not found anything in particular I disagree with. Her questions mirror many of my own.
5. Please give at least one item that your mind keeps going back to from this chapter. Does it encourage you to take action in any way?
“How do I wake up to joy and grace and beauty and all that is the fullest life when I must stay numb to losses and crushed dreams and all that empties me out?”... "For years we all silently ask these questions. For years, we come up empty. And over the years, we fill again - with estrangement. We live with our hands clenched tight." (pg. 7) My thoughts exactly. How?
? When you have spent a lifetime protecting yourself, how do you let your guard down? When you see a pattern of pain and disappointment in your life, how do you change your perception of things to come? When I was in high school, I was **** and beaten by my first boyfriend. It left me reeling and shut down a large part of me. I felt hollow, cold and alone. I became more self conscious and more needy. I know I drove my friends nuts. I feel immense sympathy for anyone who has had to deal with that side of me over the past 14 years. I was silent about the whole thing for years. It formed unhealthy patterns. I carried those habits and pain into my marriage. I got married in 2007 to a man that I truly believed God wanted me to be with. He said and did all the things I wanted to hear from a future husband. He portrayed love, repentance, thirst for knowledge of God and the desire to be my protector. Almost immediately after our wedding things changed. He seemed to have changed overnight. Day 3 of our honeymoon I spent the night on the couch crying myself to sleep and wondering what I had gotten myself in to. Words of love had turned into harsh criticism. Instead of being a wife I became a makeover project – something ugly that desperately needed to be fixed in order to be of any use. If I am honest, I will admit there were red flags in the beginning of our relationship that I ignored. I was so desperate for a knight in shining armor that I wasn’t willing to look at those signs for what they were. I threw myself into him with all my baggage wanting him to make everything all right. But I wanted him to make everything better. I wanted him to fix everything that was broken. It wasn’t fair of me. What I was asking of him was the impossible. There is no one who could have healed me apart from God and I was the only one who could deal with my pain. I also didn’t realize that he had his own pain that he wanted me to heal. When I wasn’t able to, he felt angry and betrayed as well. His reaction was to withhold love and acceptance. My reaction was to spend much of my time insulating my heart and mind inside the safe place in my head and withdraw. The more he criticized the more I retreated. When he needed me to be a loving and supporting wife, I was mentally and emotionally absent. I didn’t honestly know how to be any different, but it was hurting him. Things got progressively worse after we moved to Iowa. He told me daily that he felt he made a mistake marrying me. I believed I was worthless and I retreated further into my head to escape the pain. I didn’t know enough about why I was the way I was to ask for help. I just saw myself as fatally flawed. It was an exhausting and empty cycle. To make things worse, almost two years into our marriage, I had an affair with an old boyfriend. I felt horrible immediately. I didn’t say anything for a month but I felt convicted every day. Finally I broke and I told my husband absolutely everything. I didn’t expect forgiveness or even a calm reaction. But I didn’t expect him to hurt me. He immediately became the very thing I was most afraid of and hated. I was locked in my bedroom and **** for three days. Everything that remained in my world shattered. The worst part was not the forced sex. The worst part was hearing myself agreeing with all the things he said. I was a ****. I was no good. I was worthless. I deserved all of this. I deserved to die. I wasn’t worth the breath I was breathing. And I truly believed every word. I believed that, because of what I did, all of this was just and fair punishment. I prayed that I would die. I deserved to die for what I had done to him and what I had done to God.The positive thing was that being broken to the point of wishing for death left me vulnerable to God. Some close Christian friends intervened and were get us out of the house and into some counseling. I was beyond broken. I wanted to make things right with God and with my husband, if he would let me. For 8 months, I poured myself into my Bible, church and my marriage. At the end of those months, my husband and I split and divorced. My marriage and my divorce left me numb. I carry invisible scars from all that had happened, heaped on top of scars that have been there from many years before. God has picked up the pieces and helped me learn to live again. He taught me that pain is a part of life and something we can survive. God does some of his best work when we are at our worst. My view of God is very much of a loving and forgiving God. I can see that very clearly. Especially after all He has blessed me with even after all I’ve done. But the numbness remains. I feel God beside me but I have not been connecting with him. I am learning to recognize that I am still afraid to connect. I know for sure that God wants to bless my life. I know He has a plan for me. I don’t truly know how to accept that kind of love, forgiveness and grace. I don’t fully trust it. I go through life believing that God is just waiting to dish out the punishment to end all punishments for my sin. How does that make any sense?! That is what I want to learn. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to my relationship with God. I am the barricade between what He wants for me and where I am at. How can I turn off the numb? How do I trust the way I need to? He loves me so much and wants to fill that emptiness! Even as He blesses me now I find myself fearful. How do I accept it?
