“Tracey was her parents’ second daughter and did not share in the easy intimacy that she saw existed between her father and older sister.  She was uncertain about herself, about his feelings for her. 

On a trip to a water park, she wanted to play with her dad.  She asked him to go down the slide with her in the children’s area.  He didn’t want to.  Tracey implored him to come with her.  She was afraid to go alone.  She wanted him to catch her at the bottom.  She wanted to do it together. 

He acquiesced. 

She gleefully walked with him hand in hand to the slide, and he went down first as planned.  But it was a children’s slide, not made for a grown man, and when he came to the end of it, the water was too shallow for him.  The force of his landing broke his foot. 

He was in pain and it was her fault.  That’s what her young heart believed.  What does that teach a girl about her desires, and about the effect if her life upon others…

Tracey’s father broke his foot.  She invited him into her heart’s desire, and the result was disaster. 

The message? 

‘Your desire for relationship causes pain.  You are just too much.’ 

And she has spent the last twenty years trying not to be too much, trying to minimize her desires, trying to find some way to be loved without being too much.  She has lopped off huge parts of her wonderful personality as a result.”

Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge pages 63-64 and 68-69

“The acceptance that comes from grace removes the fear of loss of love so that we can work on our problems without the fear of isolation. No one can learn love in an atmosphere where there’s fear of abandonment. There’s way too much at stake. You need to first find a group of forgiven people. Forgiven people understand living with imperfection.

When others withdraw from us because of certain traits we have, we begin to see those as “bad” even if they’re not. For example: our needs, anger, own will, our anxiety, sadness or exhilaration.”

– Cloud and Townsend