Beautifully Broken

Paula French

Description

Beautifully Broken is a 10- week guide that offers healing from past wounds and leads to a healthier relationship with self, others, and God.

Beautifully Broken is a healing path from brokenness to a beautiful freedom. This 10-12 week Biblically-based interactive study (complete with Leader Notes) includes daily readings and questions that identify past woundings and the resulting shame messages we carry with us. This gentle guide will help you find healing for emotional and spiritual barriers in your relationships with yourself, with God and with others. The transforming result will be worth more than gold!

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Living
• Personal Growth
• Philosophie et théologie
• Forgiveness
• Healing
• Suffering
• Past
• Shame
• Trauma

Informations

• Publié par: WestBow Press
• Date de parution: 18 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781664289901
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

God reminded us that we will have troubles in our lives. Yet it is difficult to know how to use all the brokenness from those troubles to become better. Paula leads her readers through a course of Bible stories and scripture, helping them better understand their own stories and truths about who they are in Christ. The workbook format provides daily lessons for reflection and direction. Paula’s own journey through a broken marriage creates vulnerability and believability in this course!
Debbie Laaser, MA, LMFT, author of Shattered Vows and From Trauma to Transformation
People recovering and moving beyond a painful past need a compassionate voice and gentle guidance for the journey. Beautifully Broken provides a biblically based and Christ-centered road map to help individuals or groups on a journey of healing and hope.
Jennifer Ellers, MA, Christian counselor, life coach, and author
In Beautifully Broken, Paula writes from her own experience, her heart, and years of supporting broken people. The book is strongly biblically based and provides a faith-based foundation for the healing journey. Essential topics, such as facing difficult truths about one’s own family dysfunction, shame, and finding one’s personal identity in the power and safety of God, are addressed. Thank you, Paula, for giving a hurting world a biblically based foundation for finding hope and healing in the present as well as keeping us grounded in scripture as our healing journey continues.
Tim Barber, MA, MDiv, DMin
Beautifully Broken
 
 
 
from broken past to golden path
 
 
 
 
 
 
PAULA FRENCH
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2023 Paula French.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
WestBow Press
A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.westbowpress.com
844-714-3454
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6642-8988-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-8989-5 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-8990-1 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023911270
 
 
 
WestBow Press rev. date: 07/12/2023
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
This book is respectfully dedicated to the many volunteers of the Center for Women’s Ministries who offer hope and healing to the hurting. Your devotion to help women heal their past and your determination to be excellent counselors is inspiring. God uses you in amazing ways to bring women from being broken to more valuable than gold.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
 
Chapter 1       Let’s Get Started!
Chapter 2       No One Wants to Hear Their Family Was Dysfunctional
Chapter 3       Instructions for Proper Attachment
Chapter 4       Ain’t It a Shame!
Chapter 5       No Suffering for Me, Please
Chapter 6       Let the Healing Flow!
Chapter 7       Living in the Truth
Chapter 8       Making All Things New Ain’t Easy
Chapter 9       Forgiveness
Chapter 10    Finding Purpose
 
Conclusion
Appendix A     Group Leader Notes
Appendix B     Agreements
Notes
Acknowledgments
Thank you to WestBow Press for accepting this project and publishing this book. Thank you also to Stanley Robertson, who met with me every month for a year, giving me wisdom and accountability in writing nearly every chapter. I am also very grateful for Jared Austin, whose knowledge and edits accelerated the writing process by weeks and made the manuscript so much better. Thank you.
Thank you, Deb Laaser and Jennifer Ellers, for your support for this book and for me. You each were an important part of my own healing, and I respect you both so much! I deeply appreciate your endorsement. Thank you also to Dr. Tim Barber, someone I admire greatly and whose work I highly respect.
My most heartfelt thanks go to my girls, who have listened to my frustrations and doubts and have been my biggest cheerleaders. You are each intelligent, honest, and wise in different and complementary ways, and I couldn’t live without your feedback and friendship. I love you so much; you are the reason this dream has finally been accomplished.
Lastly and most importantly, I thank God, who is my faithful covering. You did not ask me to write this book, but You allowed me and helped me push through. I would ask for Your blessing and Your healing on every person who reads this, every group that journeys through it, and every center that adopts it—for Your glory.
Introduction
Welcome to this ten-week experience of making peace with your past. I am glad you have decided to take time to evaluate your life—where you have been, where you are now, and where you are heading. Many people live their entire lives going down whatever road is before them, never knowing where it will lead them. They cannot tell you how they got to where they are now, and they certainly do not know how to successfully get to the end. Many of us can see behind us the brokenness from the choices we have made and choices that were made for us. Thankfully, our lives are not seen by God as blocked and broken roadways but carefully designed spans of time lovingly planned from birth to death by a sovereign God and Heavenly Father—a more perfect Father than any of us here could have known. And while He is indeed the sovereign designer of our lives, He is also a Father so loving; His desire is simply for us to know Him. He will not force us down a specific path. Yet there is no halt or turn, no shock or surprise on our journey He is not aware of. There is no event or circumstance He is not already there waiting for us to choose the direction that leads toward Him. There is also no part of the path we have already traveled He cannot heal and redeem.
Many of us are unaware how the path behind us has led to where we are today. Perhaps we are so busy with today’s decisions we have never taken the time to look back. Perhaps we are too afraid to look back or have determined never to do so. Others may have already spent countless hours, weeks, or even years seeking help for the consequences of the past. I do not believe those efforts were in vain. Some healing requires more time and many more steps. Thank God for the healing you have already received! One thing I know for sure is God does not do a halfway job at anything. He left no detail undone in creating this incredible world or our incredible minds and bodies. Our minds and bodies have been studied for centuries, and we are still learning how they work! Jesus did not halfway bring Lazarus back from the dead (John 11:1–44), nor did He halfway heal the blind man (John 9:1–11). Whatever healing He has begun in you, He will continue to completion. There is no brokenness He will not make whole, as long as we continue following the path and choosing His leading at every turn.
It is true that some healing will be completed to perfection when life here is over. But consider the apostle Paul begged God three times to remove an infirmity he struggled with, and did he receive healing? God’s answer to him was sufficient grace and strength in his weakness (2 Corinthians 12:8–11). While Paul’s earthly healing was different from what he had asked for, there surely must have been a tremendous healing. He no longer felt like a victim of this infirmity. He no longer let it hold him back. He no longer felt defeated because of it. In fact, he was able to boast about how God’s strength was there for him. He boasted about it gladly, and he delighted in this weakness that in effect made him stronger than without it! Only someone who is on the path daily with an affliction given to God at every turn can understand this kind of healing. Whatever path has led you here, I assure you there is healing for you.
When my marriage ended after thirty-nine years, I was completely crushed and heartbroken. I felt betrayed and abandoned by God, not only because I had tried to live a God-honoring life and had prayed earnestly and desperately for God to save my marriage but also because He knew this was going to happen. I remember sitting in my red chair weeping bitter, angry tears while crying out, “You knew this was going to happen! You knew when we said our vows this was going to happen! And you knew every anniversary we celebrated how many we had left! Why did you let me fall so in love if you knew I was going to lose him after all this time?”
In his book The Red Sea Rules , Robert Morgan shares ten “rules,” or principles, God showed him in Exodus 14 for how to handle life’s difficulties and times of crisis. Red Sea Rule number 1 says, “Realize that God means for you to be where you are.” 1 This was difficult for me to understand in my time of crisis. It felt cruel and uncaring. Life always feels cruel and uncaring when things don’t go our way. But everything that happens in this life, whether by human choice or natural causes, happens because God either allows it or causes it. And whether it is by God’s permis