From My Heart

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Taming the Dragons

Why I Wrote Taming the Dragons

by Brenda Wilbee

I’m excited about the resurrection of my 1992 book Taming the Dragons: Powerful Choices for Women in Conflict and Pain. July 2020, it’s back in print but with some changes:

1) updated,
2) more stories,
3) journaling pages, and
4) questions designed for self-reflection that can also be used in group discussions.

Taming the Dragons is a book for women in conflict and pain, but also for anyone going through a rough patch, in transition, or just down on their luck. I name six choices we can all make when up against the dragons in our way, depending on what they are. I partner six women from the Bible with the Wizard of Oz, perhaps the most endearing fairy tale of our day, to illustrate what these choices are and how they work. I then tell ten short stories of women who have made these choices to better their lives and the lives of those around them. But why did I write the book?

To answer that question, I’d like to tell you a story from my childhood.

by Brenda Wilbee

ONCE upon a time … the raging dragon … a hero and a damsel in distress. Remember the old fairy tales? Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty and happily ever after? It was always that way in our bedtime stories. But what about real life? What’s happened to our happily ever after? Daily we live under the dragon’s fire: we can hardly conceive of victory.

TAMING THE DRAGONS: Lucy, Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Brenda Wilbee

Sometimes we use I Corinthians 10:13 to deny the power of evil, and in doing so we let evil reign. Interpreting the word “temptation” to mean circumstances or events or crushing stress rather than what it does mean—temptation to do wrong—we blind ourselves to people whose burdens really are too heavy to bear. Erroneously assured in our minds that God will not allow too much stress to accumulate in a neighbor’s life, we sit back and allow our neighbor to suffer more than he or she can withstand.

by Brenda Wilbee

“I awoke shortly after midnight, and within minutes I’d been shot in the head.” Mary was asleep in bed with her three-and-a-half-year-old son when an intruder broke into her home through a bathroom window.

Taming the Dragons: Mary, Mother of Jesus

by Brenda Wilbee

WAS MARY, fiance of Joseph, at the well in Nazareth when the stranger approached? Or was she washing butter, packing it into earthen vessels? What was she doing when a man she’d never seen before said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

I wonder, did the bucket fall from her hand, warm water splash across her hot and dusty feet? Did she drop her bowl? Did it break? Did she hasten to gather the precious butter coated now in dust and dirt? Kneeling, scooping, heart beating fast?

by Brenda Wilbee

MY COUSINS WERE ALMOST HOME, pushing their bikes up the last of the hill. It was a winter evening early in the new year of 1974, and a slight drizzle hurried them along: Patty, thirteen, Christine, eleven. Lights from the kitchen window could be seen through the trees. Suddenly, a car driven by a young man blinded by the setting sun came gunning up over the ridge. Patty ran the half block home screaming. Uncle Stan, the town doctor, was paged. Christine had been in an accident.

Taming the Dragons: He Can't Hurt Me Anymore

by Brenda Wilbee

AS A SINGLE MOTHER, I related to Jacob and his feelings of being cheated. In my first three years, child support had changed thirty-eight times. I lived in constant economic upheaval. There are other ways to be cheated, too. We can be cheated out of recognition, time, honor, even love. In the business world we can be cheated when someone takes credit for something we did. Gossip robs us of our reputation. A busy boss may fail to be appreciative. Employees fudge on their time slips. Beyond the workplace there are even more ways to be cheated. Everyone has horror stories of car mechanics, attorneys, and politicians. And yet God did not allow Laban to harm Jacob. . .

by Brenda Wilbee

The night was hot when Bathsheba went up to bathe on the top of her home in Jerusalem. She didn’t know King David’s new palace on the eastern ridge afforded a view of her rooftop, nor that he, unable to sleep that night, had gone up to his own roof to get some air. She only knew that a message arrived the next day—the king summoning her to his palace.

by Brenda Wilbee

When ISABEL "SOJOURNER TRUTH" was born a slave in 1797 in Hurley, NY, it was against the law to sell a slave South. Yet when a former master sold her five-year-old son Peter to a Dr. Gedney (who in turn sold him to his brother Solomon), it didn’t stop Solomon Gedney from selling the little boy to his sister’s brother, an Alabama planter. Outraged and grief-stricken, Sojourner Truth confronted Solomon Gedney’s wife. When she got no satisfaction, she appealed to Mrs. Gedney the matron, mother of the man who’d illegally sold her son.

“Ugh!” said Mrs. Gedney. “A fine fuss to make about a little nigger!

by Brenda Wilbee

BEFORE Anne Hutchinson was born, her father Francis Marbury had been thrown into English prisons three times for his Puritan views. His daughter, Anne Marbury Richardson, must have gotten her steel from him. She needed it, for she ran afoul of the Purtians themselves—in the New World. They held little tolerance for anyone else.

by Brenda Wilbee

This blog is an excerpt from Taming the Dragons, published by HarperCollins twenty or more years ago, to be released this coming year by Redemption Press. The story is of Mary Dyer, a Quaker hung by the Puritans in 1659 for standing her ground on religious freedom. I included her in the Martyr section of the book because I make the point that to suffer as someone's victim (ex: abusive relationships) is pointless. Only when we choose to martyr ourselves, the decision our own, can suffering redeem. For it's done from a position of power not endurance. Mary, a Christian Quaker, was hung by the prevailing Christians of the day. But that was not the end of it. Because today we enjoy religious freedom, and a statue of Mary Dyer on the Boston Commons not far from where she died reminds us why...

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