Notes on Captivating

I am reading Captivating by John and Stasi Elderidge, the girl book to Wild at Heart. It has been somewhat frustrating and painful. The book often focuses on what is broken in the feminine and how women are twisted. Then it lays out the ideal. But the bridge between them is always the mystery.

I laugh cynically when I read that both the author and her husband had been thinking that they had disappointed each other, but it turned out that it was just the devil accusing them. They cast out that spirit of accusation, so that they could revel in their acceptance and satisfaction with each other. Ha! and double HA! To be married is to be disappointed and to disappoint.

I love being married and wouldn't trade my husband for anything. We have one of the most satisfying relationships I have seen or can imagine. But it has also been marked by pain, anger and unmet expectations and the death of dreams. No amount of casting out of demons would change that. The only thing that brings peace in that place is the death of self, and accepting what gifts my husband brings, and an end to trying to take what isn't there. Grace grows faster than slow healing, and learning to live without comes before learning to supply one another.

I have been bouncing ideas from Captivating off my husband, and he has been mostly unimpressed. I've been annoyed that he doesn't appreciate the feminine enough. However, I was very encouraged by his latest response: "My masculine self will never be fully realized in the flesh. Your feminine self will never be fully realized in the flesh. This does not mean despair... it means there is an alternate hope, a transcendent hope. I will not hope in the feminine nor the masculine... it is not destined to be. I won't find the leadership and teaching and mentorship and pastoral care from a man that I would like. I won't find the encouraging, submitted, obedient, wise, caring, women either."

It just let me off the hook, you know? Here's this ideal woman lifted up, and I can't be her. I can't get there. But it's okay, because this isn't the last stop on the train. My flesh will die, and I will awaken a Fully New Creation, with my femininity intact. As I walk in the Spirit now, I will taste the blessings to come, including more of what the sexes were meant to be, but uncrafted and uncontrived by human mind or hand.