Captivating

a race to drink as deeply of as much beauty as possible, together. (Location 51)

the fact that it required all of me, that I was in it with my family and for my family, that I was surrounded by wild, shimmering beauty and it was, well, kind of dangerous made the time ... transcendent. (Location 67)

I was left alone to navigate my way through adolescence, through my changing and awakening body, a picture of my changing and awakening heart. No counsel was given for the journey into womanhood. (Location 77)

To be told when you are young and searching that "you can be anything" is not helpful. It's too vast. It gives no direction. (Location 81)

as for romance, I stumbled through that mysterious terrain with only movies and music as a guide. (Location 83)

There are reams of materials on what you ought to do to be a good woman. But that is not the same thing as knowing what the journey toward becoming a woman involves, (Location 96)

you'd have to conclude that a godly woman is ... tired. And guilty. (Location 101)

An underlying, gut feeling of failing at who she is. I am not enough, and, I am too much at the same time. (Location 106)

Shame, the universal companion of women. (Location 108)

our deepest fear that we will end up abandoned and alone. (Location 109)

we long for intimacy and for adventure; we long to be the Beauty of some great story. (Location 113)

The message to the rest of us-whether from a driven culture or a driven church-is try harder. (Location 115)

the journey begins with desire. (Location 124)

every woman in her heart of hearts longs for three things: to be romanced, to play an irreplaceable role in a great adventure, and to unveil beauty. That's what makes a woman come alive. (Location 126)

I simply loved feeling wanted and fought for. (Location 132)

A little girl longs for romance, to be seen and desired, to be sought after and fought for. (Location 135)

we were made to be a part of a great adventure. An adventure that is shared. We do not want the adventure merely for adventure's sake but for what it requires of us for others. We don't want to be alone in it; we want to be in it with others. (Location 169)

We long to be an irreplaceable part of a shared adventure. (Location 174)

Their young hearts intuitively want to know they are lovely. (Location 185)

every man wants a battle to fight. (Location 229)

Men also long for adventure. (Location 235)

every man longs for a Beauty to rescue. (Location 238)

You can find that life-if you are willing to embark on a great adventure. (Location 250)

Creation itself is a great work of art, and all works after it are echoes of the original. (Location 284)

She is the crescendo, the final, astonishing work of God. Woman. (Location 309)

"The whole, vast world is incomplete without me. Creation reached its zenith in me." (Location 315)

When you are with a woman, ask yourself, what is she telling me about God? (Location 319)

God is relational to his core, that he has a heart for romance. Second, that he longs to share adventures with us-adventures you cannot accomplish without him. And finally, that God has a beauty to unveil. (Location 320)

Most women define themselves in terms of their relationships, and the quality they deem those relationships to have. (Location 335)

God yearns to share a life of beauty, intimacy, and adventure with us. (Location 356)

God makes romance a priority of the universe. (Location 359)

notice-the mission to be fruitful and conquer and hold sway is given both to Adam and to Eve. (Location 368)

"sustainer beside him." (Location 375)

the life God calls us to is not a safe life. (Location 384)

God calls us to a life involving frequent risks and many dangers. (Location 385)

That longing in the heart of a woman to share life together as a great adventure-that comes straight from the heart of God, who also longs for this. (Location 393)

God is essential. He wants us to need him-desperately. Eve is essential. She has an irreplaceable role to play. (Location 395)

Nature is not primarily functional. It is primarily beautiful. (Location 405)

beauty is in and of itself a great and glorious good, something we need in large and daily doses (for our God has seen fit to arrange for this). (Location 407)

God gave Eve a beautiful form and a beautiful spirit. (Location 422)

On behalf of God, Adam says, "God will come through. God is on the move." That is why a passive man is so disturbing. His passivitydefies his very essence. It violates the way he bears God's image. (Location 430)

That is what beauty says, All shall be well. (Location 444)

Beauty also invites. (Location 449)

Beauty nourishes. It is a kind of food our souls crave. (Location 454)

Beauty comforts. There is something profoundly healing about it. (Location 458)

Beauty inspires. (Location 462)

Beauty is transcendent. It is our most immediate experience of the eternal. (Location 467)

Sometimes the beauty is so deep it pierces us with longing. For what? For life as it was meant to be. (Location 469)

"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter," says the book of Proverbs, "to search out a matter is the glory of kings" (25:2). (Location 482)

God does not throw himself at any passerby. He is no harlot. If you would know him you must love him; you must seek him with your whole heart. (Location 484)

Is not the Trinity a great mystery? Not something to be solved, but known with ever-deepening pleasure and awe, something to be enjoyed. (Location 486)

romance-why are most of the relationships of women fraught with hardship? (Location 512)

Somehow, somewhere between our youth and yesterday, efficiency has taken the place of adventure. (Location 516)

We struggle to know if we matter at all. If we are at home, we feel ashamed we don't have a "real life" in the outside world. We are swallowed by laundry. If we have a career, we feel as though we are missing out on more important… (Location 517)

There is nothing captivating about me. Certainly not inside me. I'll be lucky to pull… (Location 522)

We are more keenly aware of our own shortcomings… (Location 528)

Little boys want to know, Do I have… (Location 531)

Nearly all a man does is fueled by his search for validation, that longing he carries for an… (Location 532)

Little girls want to know, Am… (Location 533)

Nearly all a woman does in her adult life is fueled by her longing to be delighted in, her longing to be beautiful, to be irreplaceable, to… (Location 536)

She is to bring him life, invite him to life. Instead, she invited… (Location 551)

And women? We tend to be grasping, reaching, controlling. We are often enchanted, like Eve, so easily falling prey to the lies of our Enemy. Having forfeited our confidence in God, we believe that in order to have the… (Location 559)

women? We tend to be grasping, reaching, controlling. We are often enchanted, like Eve, so easily falling… (Location 559)

Man is cursed with futility and failure. Life is going to be hard for a man now in the place he will feel it most.… (Location 567)

futility and failure. Life is going to be hard for a man now in the place he will feel it most.… (Location 567)

Woman is cursed with loneliness (relational heartache), with the urge to control (especially her man), and with the dominance of men (which is not how things were meant to be, and we are not saying it is a good… (Location 570)

There is an emptiness in us that we continually try to feed. And can't you see how much you need to have things under your control-whether it's a project or a ministry or a marriage? Are you… (Location 573)

Most women hate their vulnerability. We are not… (Location 575)

We are not inviting-we are guarded. Most of our energy is spent trying to hide our true selves, and control our worlds… (Location 575)

When a woman falls from grace, what is most deeply marred is her tender vulnerability, beauty that invites to life. She becomes a dominating, controlling woman-or a desolate, needy, mousy woman. Or some odd… (Location 578)

this-there is nothing merciful about her, nothing tender, and certainly nothing vulnerable. She has forsaken… (Location 587)

Fallen Eve controls her relationships. She refuses to be vulnerable. And if she cannot secure her relationships, then she kills her heart's longing for intimacy… (Location 595)

women dominate and control because they fear their… (Location 598)

"Whatever is not from faith is sin" (Rom.… (Location 599)

Controlling women are those of us who don't trust anyone else to drive our cars. Or help in our kitchens. Or speak at our retreats or our meetings. Or carry something for us. Make a decision that is "ours" to make. Suggest a different dress, agenda, restaurant, route. We room alone when we travel. We plan perfect birthday parties for our children. It might look as though we're simply "trying to be a good mom," or a good friend, but what we often do is arrange other people's lives. Controlling… (Location 603)

Controlling women are "the sort of women," as C. S. Lewis said, "who `live for others.' You can tell the others… (Location 606)

Martha Stewart perfectionism might not… (Location 609)

desperate to be… (Location 614)

Desolate women are ruled by the aching abyss… (Location 614)

They are consumed by a hunger for… (Location 615)

they do not draw attention. Because she does not believe she is worth paying attention to. Desolate women might be busy women who hide… (Location 620)

You can imagine, there was no romping in that house. There was no fort building or game playing or dashing about. It was… (Location 627)

Her hiding, like our hiding, only made… (Location 634)

Hiding women are those of us who never speak up at a Bible study or PTA council… (Location 638)

We stay busy at family gatherings and parties we can't avoid. We'd rather go to a movie than out to dinner with a friend. We don't initiate sex with our husbands ever. We dismiss every… (Location 639)

We hide our truest selves and offer only what we believe is wanted, what is safe. We act in self-protective ways and refuse to offer what we truly see, believe, and know. We will not risk rejection or looking like a fool. We have spoken in the past and been met with blank stares and mocking guffaws. We will not do it again. We hide because we are afraid. We have been wounded and wounded deeply. People have sinned against… (Location 641)

To hide means to remain safe, to… (Location 644)

the ache remains. The deep longings in our hearts as women just won't go away… (Location 647)

We imagine meaningful conversations or difficult ones where we… (Location 652)

Where do you go instead of to God when the ache of your heart begins to… (Location 654)

even our negative emotions can become… (Location 655)

When we camp our hearts in self-doubt, condemning thoughts, or even shame because those emotions have become familiar and comfortable, we are faithlessly indulging rather… (Location 656)

The ways we find to numb our aches, our longings, and our pain are not benign. They are malignant. They entangle themselves in our souls like a cancer and, once attached, become addictions that are both cruel and relentless. Though we seek them out for a little relief from the sorrows of life, addictions turn on us and imprison us in chains that separate us from the heart of God and others as well. It is a lonely prison of our own making, each chain forged in the fire of our indulgent choice. Yet, "Our lovers have so intertwined themselves… (Location 660)

All of our hearts are at some level unsatisfied and longing. It is our insatiable need for more… (Location 665)

That is a woman's worst… (Location 668)

We are wounded into believing horrid things… (Location 674)

If a woman is comfortable with her own femininity, her beauty, her strength, then the chances are good… (Location 691)

Our mothers show us the merciful face of God. (Location 694)

Little girls learn how to live as women by watching their mothers, their grandmothers, (Location 697)

Little girls need the tender strength of their fathers. They need to know that their daddies are strong and will protect them; they need to know that their fathers are for them. Above all, a little girl learns the answer to her Question from her father. (Location 700)

And most people are in more painthan even they realize. (Location 728)

Because we are the ones loved by the God, the King of kings, Jesus himself, who came to heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free, we can take a look back. We can take his hand and remember. We must remember if we would not be held prisoner to the wounds and the messages we received growing up. (Location 729)

My mom was a lonely and busy woman. When I was young I had to pretend to be sick in order to get a morsel of her attention. I (Location 753)

her mother was jealous. She told Chris that her father was just "using" her. She spewed venom that her father was cruel, selfish, and the attention he paid her was wrong. Chris's mom belittled her love for horses, never came to a class or a show, and told Chris that in her riding clothes she looked manly and unattractive. (Location 759)

What lessons did you learn as a little girl? What did your parents want from you? Were you delighted in? Did you know to the core of your being that you were loved, special, worth protecting, and wanted? (Location 766)

makes her search so frustrating is that she doesn't know what is wrong with her. She simply fears that somehow she is not enough. (Location 780)

And to be feminine is to draw unwanted intimacy to yourself (Location 785)

compulsively heading in another direction. They never received love, but they did experience some sort of intimacy through the sexual abuse, and now they give themselves over to one man after another, hoping to somehow heal the wrongful sexual encounters with sex that has love to it. (Location 789)

I would think he was away on a business trip far from home when in reality he was just an hour's drive away. (Location 807)

you never knew which father you were going to get. Would it be the happy dad or the raging father? (Location 809)

Our home was no longer a refuge but became a battleground. Meals together often ended with angry words and hot tears. (Location 809)

vowed to protect myself by never causing pain, never requiring attention. (Location 816)

John's slightest disappointment in something I had done triggered my unhealed heart. It (Location 821)

I feared from the start of my marriage that at my core I was-and would always be-a disappointment to John; that it was simply a matter of time before he realized it. (The message of my wound.) The wounded little girl inside thought it would be better to hide. (Location 825)

Shame makes us feel, no, believe, that we do not measure up-not to the world's standards, the church's standards, or our own. (Location 831)

If we are a desolate kind of woman, we offer our "service." We are silent and do not say what we see or know when it is different from what others are saying, because we think we must be wrong. We refuse to bring the weight of our lives, who God has made us to be, to bear on others out of a fear of being rejected. (Location 837)

Something inside of us shifted. We embraced the messages of our wounds. We accepted a twisted view of ourselves. (Location 843)

Our desperate need for love and affirmation, our thirst for some taste of romance and adventure and beauty is there. So we turned to boys or to food or to romance novels; we lost ourselves in our work or at church or in some sort of service. (Location 848)

Much of what we call our "personalities" is actually the mosaic of our choices for self-protection plus our plan to get something of the love we were created (Location 849)

I was terrified of men and terrified of my beauty. Beauty was dangerous. (Location 886)

You are a disappointment. You are worthless. No one cares. No one wants to care. You are alone. (Location 890)

He pushed me away and told me he wasn't in the mood. After our wedding night we didn't have sex again for over a week. He didn't touch me or even seem the least bit interested in me. I was devastated! And again my question was answered the exact same way. (Location 897)

We don't feel that we are irreplaceable, so we try and make ourselves useful. We don't believe we are beautiful, so we work hard to be outwardly beautiful orwe "let ourselves go" and hide behind a persona that has no allure. We try so hard, and in so many ways, to protect our hearts from further pain. (Location 903)

He craved the worship that was being given to God for himself He didn't merely want to play a noble role in the Story; he wanted the Story to be about him. He wanted to be the star. He wanted the attention, the adoration for himself. ("Mirror, Mirror, on the wall ...")Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. (Ezek. 28:17)Satan fell because of his beauty. Now his heart for revenge is to assault beauty. He destroys it in the natural world wherever he can. Strip mines, oil spills, fires, Chernobyl. He wreaks destruction on the glory of God in the earth like a psychopath committed to destroying great works of art.But most especially, he hates Eve. (Location 943)

The Evil One also hates Eve because she gives life. Women give birth, not men. Women nourish life. And they also bring life into the world soulfully, relationally, spiritually-in everything they touch. (Location 949)

Most of you thought the things that have happened to you were somehow your fault-that you deserved it. If only you had been prettier or smarter or done more or pleased them, somehow it wouldn't have happened. You would have been loved. They wouldn't have hurt you. (Location 957)

The message of our wounds nearly always is, "This is because of you. This is what you deserve." It changes things to realize that, no, it is because you are glorious that these things happened. It is because you are a major threat to the kingdom of darkness. Because you uniquely carry the glory of God to the world.You are hated because of your beauty and power. (Location 959)

Back off or, Leave her alone, or, You don't really want to go there-she'll be too much for you is something Satan has set against every woman from the day of her birth. (Location 992)

This is the way of the Evil One toward you. He plays upon a woman's worst fear: Abandonment. He arranges for her to be abandoned, and he puts his spin on every event he can to make it seem like abandonment. (Location 1005)

a woman's worst fear: Abandonment. He arranges for her to be abandoned, and he puts his spin on every event he can to make it seem like abandonment. (Location 1005)

Hephzibah [my delight is in her], (Location 1017)

But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds," declares the LORD, "because you are called an outcast, Zion for whom no one cares." (Location 1020)

The purposes of Jesus Christ are not finished when one of his precious ones is forgiven. Not at all. Would a good father feel satisfied when his daughter is rescued from a car accident, but left in ICU? Doesn't he want her to be healed as well? (Location 1044)

God (Location 1053)

To help you find the restoration which we long for and which is central… (Location 1064)

you will see the gentle, firm hand of God in a woman's life… (Location 1074)