Freefall to Fly: A Breathtaking Journey Toward a Life of Meaning Author: Rebekah Lyons | Language: English | ISBN:
B008PX1U3A | Format: EPUB
Freefall to Fly: A Breathtaking Journey Toward a Life of Meaning Description
Women today are fading. In a female culture built on Photoshopped perfection and Pinterest fantasies, we’ve lost the ability to dream our own big dreams. So busy trying to do it all and have it all, we’ve missed the life we were really designed for. And we are paying the price. The rise of loneliness, depression, and anxiety among the female population in Western cultures is at an all-time high. Overall, women are two and a half times more likely to take antidepressants than men. What is it about our culture, the expectations, and our way of life that is breaking women down in unprecedented ways?
In this vulnerable memoir of transformation, Rebekah Lyons shares her journey from Atlanta, Georgia, to the heart of Manhattan, where she found herself blindsided by crippling depression and anxiety. Overwhelmed by the pressure to be domestically efficient, professionally astute, and physically attractive, Rebekah finally realized that freedom can come only by facing our greatest fears and fully surrendering to God’s call on our lives. This book is an invitation for all women to take that first step toward freedom. For it is only when we free-fall that we can truly fly.
- File Size: 599 KB
- Print Length: 221 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1414379366
- Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (April 9, 2013)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B008PX1U3A
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #51,099 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #100
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Christian Living > Women's Issues
- #100
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Christian Living > Women's Issues
The whole time I read this disappointing book I kept wondering where the adults were. The personal anxiety of one woman, shallow by her own admission, who perceives that her panic attacks must mean God wants her to become a writer may seem like an epiphany to her but shouldn't to anyone else. Her story is very familiar to thousands of (mostly) women who for a variety of reasons find their lives paling in comparison to those around them. But the voice calling one to a career/call of fame and fortune is rarely misconstrued as God and certainly shouldn't be promoted in print. Common sense and a grasp of basic theology brings into question whether the author understands what the bible means when the word "call" is used.
Also, the mental health angle falls flat. The author makes it clear she has a temporary form of mental disease so it's not clear why she deems herself an authority on the subject when talking to the 1/4 of women with mental illness. Those women often have a more permanent form of mental health issues and this book is patronizing and dismissive towards them. For example, she speaks lovingly about her father who has been battling chronic mental health issues for years but in the next breath tells women that their anxiety and depression is due to their resistance to following God's call. Is the same true for her father? Is the chapter devoted to him a thinly veiled admonition that he isn't close enough to God and should follow her much more Godly example? The story in which she relates her father-in-law agreeing with his impertinent grandchild that he "buried" his artistic gift by not accepting a scholarship years ago made me cringe, both for the disrespect of the child and to the man.
I'm not quite sure what to think about this book. While there are many things to appreciate about Rebekah's story, there are more things with which I'm not quite connecting. To be honest, the subtitle to the book, "A Breathtaking Journey Toward a Life of Meaning" is what caught my attention and made me want to read the book. Who doesn't want to live a life of meaning? I'm always interested in knowing what people consider as "a life of meaning"; especially influential people such as Ms Lyons.
Here are some of the things I marked from the book:
"Limitations of the mundane that used to come so easily. This city would push me to get on my knees, to grovel, to fully enter into my weakness. To strike a child's pose. Rest there. In my cries of lament, I heard a word so clearly it almost sounded audible. Stay. What does that even mean? Stay in the freefall. A truth hit me in that moment. All my life. I've been running. Running to the next greatest thing" (pg. 35)
"We aren't depressed because we are getting old; we are depressed in the prime of our lives. During the years when we ought to be making some of our greatest contributions to others and to the world, we are stuck. Caught in a quagmire of confusion, hardly able to put one foot in front of the other. What is going on? And why now? I'm no medical doctor, and I have no degrees in psychology, but I do love to listen to the stories of women. Women who are in the sweet spot of this demographic who are fighting to make sense of their lives. I hear the stories, unpack their pain, and consistently find a common perpetrator. We don't know who we are." (pg. 67)
"Every life path always works this way, crooked and bending with every decision we make. As difficulty presents itself, do we retreat?
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