Stephen Arterburn - Take Your Life Back: How to Stop Letting the Past and Other People Control You

W E COMMEND YOU for picking up this book. Your interest shows an awareness that your life can be better and that something needs to change in order for this to happen. Maybe youve tried other things that havent worked, and maybe you dont have a lot of hope that things can actually get better. But thats where we come in.

Numerous formulas and plans are available to help you find healing, purpose, and meaning and weve written a few of them ourselves. Such plans and formulas will succeed if you can work them. But its not easy to follow a plan if something or someone has a hold on your life. If there is a force within you or around you that continues to exert power over your life power that overwhelms your best intentions, sabotages your greatest efforts, and frustrates your deepest desires then no formula or set of keys or steps will help you until you are able to take your life back. True freedom comes when you gain the strength to no longer live in reaction to the negative power whose destructive control has kept you from living the life you were meant to live.

When I (Steve) was a young man, a force within me controlled everything in my life. It derailed the use of every talent, gift, and skill I possessed. It saturated my life with a deep darkness and the most penetrating pain imaginable. At times, it kept me locked in my room and stuck in my bed. There were days when my only goal was to break the oppressive bondage long enough to get out of bed, stand up, and walk farther than the bathroom at least to the kitchen, where I could catch a glimpse of outside light.

The hold on my life was so strong and so powerful that it almost killed me. Ill tell you more about that later in the book, but for now, suffice it to say that I have seen the pit from the inside.

The force that controls your life may be similar to the one that controlled mine. And it may be destroying any potential for joy or meaning to rise up in your life. If youre at all like I was, you may feel all bound up with shame and until you take command of it and remove it from the center of your world, nothing will ever get better. But dont despair. Thats why were here to help you.

Because shame is so common and so destructive, we want to establish right here in the introduction that our desire our goal is for you to read this book without experiencing even a single pang of shame for where you are, where youve been, or what youve been through. Both of us (Steve and David) have had to deal with our own deep-seated shame. And just like you, most likely, we both have experienced some form of shaming from well-meaning professionals whose perspective and approach seemed so far above and beyond where wed been. If you desire something better and want to take a significant step toward living differently, you can be assured that were walking the pathway to freedom right along with you. We will show you how to move from reactive attitudes and behaviors to a place where you can choose your response to what life brings your way.

Not all shame is bad. Sometimes it motivates people to make good and necessary changes. But shame that comes from abuse, rejection, abandonment, neglect, or judgment or even from well-meaning professionals can infuse horror and self-loathing into the soul. Thats the kind of shame we will help you get rid of with some cooperation on your part and replace with hope and healing, along with renewed purpose, vision, and meaning. We want to help you take charge of your past and your current circumstances so that you can look forward with confidence and faith to the road ahead.

Even if youre skeptical, believing that nothing can help and that this book will probably be no different from any other, at least youre still reading youre still searching, still hoping. If youre not quite willing to buy in just yet, or if youre not sure youre willing to do what it takes to change, dont worry. Willingness is an acquired taste. It takes time, and it may not come easily. But if youre simply willing to stay with us, we will help you get the rest of the way by first eliminating the hold that destructive forces or influences have on your life. We will help you see your struggle from a different perspective, and well help you change the things that you have the power to change. As we help you take your life back, we hope and pray that any shame you still bear will melt away.

Thank you for allowing us an opportunity to help you. We have written several books together, but never with a greater desire to see people like you find hope, healing, meaning, purpose, and transformation. May God greatly bless you, and may you experience his presence as you read the following pages and begin to experience the life you were born to live.

PART I

The Reactive Life