Mommy Brain

If you want to read a book on Biblical femininity and you are tempted to read Captivating because it is so popular right now, I’d encourage you to read Fresh-Brewed Life: A Stirring Invitation to Wake Up Your Soul by Nicole Johnson instead. She captures the essence of what it means to be a woman who loves God, without the doctrinal errors that are at the heart of Captivating. Ms. Johnson challenges the reader to Encounter Your Journal, Listen to Your Longings, Embrace Your Beauty, Interview Your Anger, Savor Your Sexuality, Celebrate Your Friendships, Change Your World, and Enrich Your Relationships. The chapter on longings especially spoke to me:

“Our yearnings, longings, cravings, and hopes are telling us something: there isn’t enough love, peace, hope, friendship, and intimacy on this earth to completely satisfy us. We will always want more.

That’s why we can have a marvelous vacation that satisfies us deeply on one level and leaves us empty on another. That’s why we can receive praise and honor from other people and yet feel insecure and alone at the same time. We were made to run on high-test fuel, and the best we get here is 89-grade octane. It’s not that we are ungrateful or greedy. God has designed us to want more out of life, and we won’t be satisfied until we get it. We cry out to God over this, “How long must I wait, O Lord?” Still we are left longing.

This feels like a no-win situation. Are longings one big cosmic setup for frustration? Perhaps, if we view them as something to be overcome or eradicated. If we spend more time trying to get them “filled up.” But if we lean in close, and put our ears to the chest of our soul and listen to our longings - they can teach us to understand God and ourselves in a way that would not happen if we were permitted to have everything we longed for. It’s true, what we don’t have shapes us more than what we have. We are like Swiss cheese, and the holes in us are actually supposed to be there. The holes are the things that make us who we are. The holes are the places God had reserved in us for Himself! The longings identify our real hunger. A hunger that drives us to Him to be satisfied. If…big if…we listen….(snip)

Can you remember when you were children? You loved as children love, simple and free. It was good, but it wasn’t even close to what it would be. And remember when you grew older? You loved as an adult, passionate and committed. But one day - one glorious day - we will love as God loves. Right now, it’s like looking in one of those mirrors that isn’t glass. It’s really difficult to see anything. You get an image, but there’s no definition. However, one day we will see Him face-to-face - His glorious face to our less-than-we-want-it-to-be face. Right now we can only see a dim reflection, but one day we will look into His eyes - the eyes that have seen from the foundation of the world. “Now I know in part…then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

All of our hungers, all of our longings will melt in the power of His gaze when it meets ours. Everything we were created to be will be evident, and we will know as we are known. We will feel known by God. I cannot hardly imagine it. We will be whole, filled, and satisfied. All of our pain, every last ounce of our sorrow, any emptiness that we have felt will vanish like the morning dew. Gone. We will kneel in His presence in a place where there are no tears [of sorrow] and where lions lie down with lambs. The intensity of His love and the encompassing of His embrace will overwhelm us. As our hearts finally receive all that we have longed for, I imagine some will dance, some will weep, but all of us will know we are home, at last.”

I marked so many passages to share with all of you, but my fingers are getting tired.

Get this book.

(This was book 14 in my Summer Reading Challenge; 4 to go.)