A Sneak Peek From Stronghold

After the bubble would burst, I’d look behind me at the shattered mess of a stunned husband and crying children. I would stand there ashamed of my actions and distraught over the woman I had allowed to come out. Visions of my girlfriends, and women I knew, would flood my mind. The images of their perfect lives were like nails laced with condemnation sealing me inside a coffin of shame. I couldn’t stand the woman I was, and I didn’t dare let those with perfect lives into my less than perfect life. I couldn’t reach out to my friends; these moments were too disgraceful to share with another.

The isolation of nowhere to go was almost worse than the episodes of rage. The solitude of my thoughts left me alone to have extensive conversations in my mind, using words I wouldn’t speak over my worst enemy! I believe it was the isolation that brought me to my knees. But being on my knees left me feeling like an aberration, completely vacant inside. God was not healing me, and I was not changing!

I was tired of finding myself time after time saying the same line of repentance for the same outbursts of rage! I wanted to find permanent freedom from this insane life I was living. I begged God for healing, not for my sake but for the sake of the ones I loved the most! In my eyes, I was destroying the very people I would otherwise lay my life down for! But, would God deliver a crazy woman?

Stronghold was originally written as a workbook curriculum from a women’s Bible study I wrote out of my healing journey from Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. But, I never really felt like God was finished with that study or me. However, with all of the books out there, why write another? I kept asking that question each time I felt God pursuing me for more to be placed on the pages of Stronghold. As I wrestled with what God was tapping into, He began to unveil His design for this particular story.

The Stronghold project is a conversation starter and a community builder. There is nothing more isolating than shame, and shame thrives in the dark places we’ve sealed off from others. For the Christian community emotional and mental disorders are some of the more hidden and misunderstood places in people’s lives. For those who don’t suffer, it’s hard to connect with those who do, and for those who do it’s hard to connect with those who don’t – a barbed wire of judgement seems to separate the two sides. The Stronghold project will dissolve those harmful barriers and begin the conversation that will connect woman to woman.

Stronghold is the journey of several women, including myself, who’ve bravely trekked out of captivity and into the liberating Stronghold of God! The book unlocks lies and exposes fears, but most of all, it walks us chapter by chapter into the authentic stronghold of a safe and loving God! There we find that His presence restores our lives to how He had always intended to them be!

Over the next few weeks, I will share little clips from the book before our release in March. The 8-week journey has a companion video of stories and conversations from other women who have battled with their own forms of captivity, from drugs to the lies of lust. As you hear their hearts you’ll discover two things: One, you’re not alone even though you’ve felt alone. And two, God is no respecter of person. What He’s done for us He plans to do for you, too!