Opening to Grace

Peggy Wright

Description

Diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder in her twenties made Peggy dive deep into exploring the stress load she carried from childhood sexual abuse and discover a path to heal and become who she was designed to be.

Diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder in her twenties, author Peggy Wright made a deep dive into exploring the impact of childhood sexual abuse. She embarked on a path to heal and become who she was designed to be.



In Opening to Grace, she shares her story, the story of a sensitive introvert discovering faith, identity, and healing from the stress load of trauma. She traces the redemptive movements of truth and grace to recover a life of beauty and passion. Deeply personal, it explores the growth of a girl drawn to beauty, joy, and wonder.



Honest and humorous, Opening to Grace traces the triumphant, restoring power of grace, connection, and authenticity during Wright’s journey to find her roots of identity and peace.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Living
• Inspirational
• Philosophie et théologie
• Healing
• Recovery
• Faith
• Trauma

Informations

• Publié par: WestBow Press
• Date de parution: 26 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781664295599
• Langue: English

Extrait

OPENING TO GRACE
Learning to Be Me
PEGGY WRIGHT


Copyright © 2023 Peggy Wright.
 
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.
 
This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.
 
 
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.
 
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.®
 
Scripture marked (NKJV) taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6642-9560-5 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-9561-2 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-9559-9 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023905098
 
 
 
WestBow Press rev. date: 07/06/2023
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Early Reader Review
Foreword
Prologue
 
Chapter 1Roots
Chapter 2Faith Community
Chapter 3A World of Feelings
Chapter 4Allies
Chapter 5Wearing Strength on the Outside
Chapter 6Life Can Hurt
Chapter 7Looking for Connection
Chapter 8Dissociation
Chapter 9Driven
Chapter 10Alone in a Crowd
Chapter 11Deepening Friendship
Chapter 12Anchoring
Chapter 13Weighted
Chapter 14Pedestal Peggy
Chapter 15The Helper
Chapter 16Future Dreams
Chapter 17Choosing Peace
Chapter 18Loyalty
Chapter 19Connected to a Whirlwind
Chapter 20Give Yourself Away
Chapter 21A Beginning and An End
Chapter 22Attempts to Love
Chapter 23A Glimpse of Light
Chapter 24Inhale to Exhale
Chapter 25Learned Helplessness
Chapter 26Relationships
Chapter 27An Awkward Conversation
Chapter 28Waiting
Chapter 29So Vulnerable
Chapter 30Heard
Chapter 31Processing
Chapter 32A Special Birthday
Chapter 33Canadian Adventure
Chapter 34Triggers
Chapter 35Regrouping
Chapter 36Honest Reflection
Chapter 37Dismantling Walls
Chapter 38Growing Pains
Chapter 39Striving
Chapter 40Future Fears
Chapter 41Thawing
Chapter 42Summer in the City
Chapter 43Definition
Chapter 44Adjusting
Chapter 45Almost
Chapter 46Wedding Day
Chapter 47Time to Rest
Chapter 48Thanksgiving
Chapter 49Transplanted
Chapter 50The Milk Pitcher
Chapter 51Living with Limits
Chapter 52Adventures in Cooking
Chapter 53Boundaryless
Chapter 54Learning to Be Me
Chapter 55Cleansing
Chapter 56Meeting in the Park
Chapter 57Debriefing
Chapter 58Letting Light In
Chapter 59The Gift in the Illness
 
Endnotes
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my gracious husband, supportive family, and insightful friends that sustained and grew me through these healing years.
Thank you to my early readers who sharpened and refined my story with your input.
EARLY READER REVIEW
This book is such a beautiful story of a faith that perseveres. The author’s writing is so beautiful, and the story so creatively told that it had me hanging on every word. Getting a detailed glimpse into the colourful inner world of the author was such a rare and wonderful experience, and I loved getting to explore her growth and healing along with her. This book will inspire you, bring up every emotion, and the story and characters are sure to linger in your thoughts.
—Alyssa Fleet
FOREWORD
This book has gone through several stages. I wrote the first draft in the third person as a novel, giving my story to a character called Grace. But I started to realize that I wanted to own and explore my story to gain self-understanding. So this is a true story, but I have intentionally focused on exploring the inner terrain of my processing. I have changed the names and context, and minimized the roles of others at times to protect their privacy. Where I have changed names, I have marked them with an asterisk* on first instance. I decided to take the character of my first boyfriend, Edward, and make it a conglomeration of experiences with different people, in order to protect their identities and help the story flow while making the points I was trying to explore about my responses. My writing efforts are not abou t exposing people in my life, but processing events that impacted my growth.
I want to also give a trigger warning to those who are trying to work through their own painful parts in their stories. If this describes you, please feel free to skip over parts of the book that are not helpful. I hope to give words to those seeking to find language for their own experiences without burdening them with more emotional pain. Writing has been a celebration of life as well as therapy for me, but parts of it may not be helpful for where you are in your own healing process. Where I have recounted childhood sexual abuse, I have tried to be honest without minimizing it but chose to blur the experiences with poetry to spare my readers who may have suffered similar trauma. If you wish to skip over these sections, I intentionally used this font. Be compassionate with yourself while you read, and skip over details as much as you wish.
My healing journey has been one of moving from hiding, image management, shame, and secrecy to experiencing gracious, authentic connections with trusted family and friends. I believe that human stories matter. I love the exchange that happens when we hear one another’s perspectives and experiences to gain empathy and understanding. This is not a road map, since there are many ways to heal that suit our individuality and circumstances. Trauma impacted how I processed my world, but grace has been a powerful force of healing. Offering my story is a redemptive step as I reclaim my voice to offer a glimpse of what God can do to create beauty from the ashes of our hard experiences. It would be an immense pleasure to me if God would use the winding, awkward path of my growth to ease the healing journeys of others.
PROLOGUE
I was twenty-two years old but felt as if I were ninety. Every day, I would get out of bed not knowing whether I could make it to my fourth-year university classes. Some days I would feel dizzy and achy by the time I finished showering, and my muscles felt like lead. On those days, I would be so weak that I would have to crawl on all fours back to my room to lie down again. I would get twelve to fourteen hours of restless sleep but still felt as though a truck had hit me. The body aches were like having the flu, and headaches became so common that I learned to tune out all but the worst pounding pain. I was really sick, and it wasn’t getting better. Months stretched on without answers.
Some days I could accomplish simple goals like writing a paper, reading for classwork, and walking to school to attend classes. But even when I did make it to class, my notes could be crazy to read because my brain would fog over halfway through the lecture, and my hand would just slide down my page before I had to stop writing and put my head down. Great friends allowed me to borrow notes to catch things my mind missed.
I stopped playing guitar because my arm hurt when I strummed the strings. I stopped singing because my throat was often sore and I felt too weak to exert the effort. I stopped doing a lot of things!
But as my outward world shrunk, I was determined to grow my inner world, finish school, and choose life! Eventually I was given a diagnosis, but it offered no hope for recovery. According to everything I read, this fatigue and pain were my new normal. But I felt sure that God held good plans for my future. I wasn’t ready to resign myself to a lifetime of lying on a couch. I trusted that there must be ways to help my body recover.
As I was praying one day, asking God to heal me, I got a picture in my mind of myself as a drooping flower bound tightly by weeds. A flash of understanding came with it. I felt as if God were saying, “Healing will be a slow process. As you trust me to lead you, I will show you part of the weed, loosen its hold, and remove its influence.”
This image became the perfect symbol for my wellness journey. I was able to find healing steps and feel life and strength return. I’ve spent thirty years praying and following the nudges and illumination while making sense of what is healthy and determining where the weeds that were robbing me of life had crept in. This is the story of my roots, the places of e