Please welcome Edie. She is a mother of four children ages 8,9,17, and 19. She gave up her career in medicine to be home with her children full time and homeschools the two youngest . Edie blogs at lifeingrace about family, faith, decorating, reading and crafting.
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Mothering has taught me to be vulnerable.
To cease trying to protect myself and to instead, open my heart to others.
John and Stasi Eldredge, in their book Captivating, describe the essence of a woman as beauty; that ‘Eve’ (woman) is the very incarnation in human form of the beauty of God. And they go on to describe that beauty is not some ‘conjured up’ set of external qualities, but is instead the essence of what God has already put inside of us. We don’t strive to ‘gin up’ beauty, we simply 'let down the veil'—to our hearts—to the part of us that inspires, comforts, speaks, invites, and nourishes. We let down our guard to the beauty God has placed there, making ourselves available and vulnerable. And we do that by being ‘at rest’, ‘at peace’ with who God has made us to be. “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters……Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.” Isa. 55:1,2 Eldredge says, “A woman of true beauty is a woman who in the depths of her soul is at rest…..she exudes a sense of calm, and invites those around her to rest as well……she speaks comfort….she offers others the grace to be and the room to become. In her presence, we can release the tension and pressure that so often grip our hearts…..Her spacious beautiful soul invites other to come, to be, to taste see that the Lord is good…A woman who makes herself vulnerable and available for intimacy invites others to do the same….in her presence, you can breathe again, you are free to be you….she unveils her beauty and invites you to life."Oh, how I long to be a woman like that. A mother like that. So often our hurts and insecurities keep us from unveiling the beauty in our hearts. We fail. We protect ourselves. We draw the curtain tight so that noone will have the chance to hurt us. But God invites us to His table, where we once again obtain forgiveness and find the strength to make our hearts available. If there is one thing our families and our children need, it is to see us without the veil-----offering our hearts and our presence ‘full of tender mercy and gentle vulnerability’. It will invite them to true life. It will captivate them. It will awaken their very souls to the beauty and paradox of God’s redemption.
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