I am into a book right now that is really resonating with my heart! I have a tendency to look at people and believe they have “it” (whatever it is) all together. Parenting, grandparenting, exercise, housecleaning, house decorating, shopping, marriage, church, devotions, and the list goes on! So, when someone kindly gave me this WONDERFUL book, I smiled and said thank you. I am convinced a book is not deemed wonderful until it is gotten into! Thus, the WONDERFUL book lay by my chair quietly waiting its turn, until last week. The very first pages were comforting to me because this woman sounded as much like a wreck as I feel and then to think she was actually published for her transparency! I am enjoying her heart and presentation of truth.
Hopefully, you are frustrated with my long-winded introduction enough to find out you just might benefit, along with me, the guidance of this dear messy lady who absolutely wants to honor Christ in her life…and the title is “UNGLUED.” Great book about the raw emotions we all feel and need to process in the moment when “it” all falls apart! What comes out and what gets stuffed.
Lysa, the Proverbs 31 woman, explains we either explode or stuff. If we are exploders, we tend to explode all over others blaming them for the ugly or we explode and then go into shame about how we just exploded all over everybody in explosion range! The other way we process our hearts when “it” falls apart, is to stuff it. Smile and keep saying it is all ok, but in reality, we build barriers or we are stacking rocks of retaliation. Both exploders and stuffers are dangerous and ugly!
Sadly, but gratefully (grateful so that I can get help!), I saw myself in each area. I am an outstanding exploder with certain unnamed people and circumstances. I can also be a gracious stuffer in order to save my proud heart (I just wouldn’t want someone to see the real me in that moment ☺). After identifying the response tendency or tendencies, the author begins to share teaching from God’s way on how to have what she calls “soul integrity.”
This is as far as I have gotten! I think the reason this book about emotions in the raw is gripping my heart so strongly is that life can come hard, fast, and deep. Sometimes I can’t catch my breath before I respond and I want to be so ready and clean that I am thinking and responding like Christ would. I know this sounds so impossible to achieve, but the more I am intentional with being prepared and filled with truth, the better shot I have of not responding in the most shallow level of response –the emotional level. Roller coaster living is just not fruitful!
UNGLUED – check it out!
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