Walk Worthy Press: What Matters Most by Renita Weems

Reading Group Questions

The following list of questions is designed to enhance a group or individual's thinking about or discussing some of the issues we hope you will consider after reading this book. This is designed as a starting point only and is not meant to limit the discussion.

Chapter 1: The Self

Early in this chapter you find the words, "The moment comes when you have to decide for your self who you are and what your own desires and fantasies are."

1. Take the time right now to describe in your own words who you are. How would you describe your self?

2. Don't be afraid. Don't be ashamed. Open your heart to life's possibilities by boldly declaring what your dreams and hopes are for your life.

3. How much of your self have you given away over the years for the sake of love? What will it cost you, do you think, to reclaim those lost parts of yourself?

Chapter 2: Identity

In this chapter you find the words: "Your past isn't something for you to be rescued from. Your past is what you learn from as you figure out how to integrate those lessons into the you you're still becoming."

1. If you'd known 10, 20 or 30 years what you know now, what would you have done differently?

2. Use the example of the journal entry on page 37 to write a letter to the self you were 10 or 20 years ago. What assurances and comfort would you want to offer woman back then that might help her forgive herself, not be so hard on herself, to instruct her, or to encourage her.

3. What are you absolutely passionate about these days?

Chapter 3: Truth

At the heart of this chapter is the line, "Coming to grips with the fact that there will be lots of people who will not like you for speaking the truth is a hard reality for women to face."

1. What is your greatest fear about telling the truth?

2. Name some people God has placed in your life who are your greatest cheerleaders and others who are your most ardent critics?

3. What is the difference between an arrogant woman and a self-confident woman?

4. Can you name some ways in which prejudice and stereotypes have kept you from opening yourself up to meet new (and different) people?

Chapter 4: Balance

We've all fallen prey to the temptation to do it all. "Like man woman, the Shulammite is unaware that she is setting herself up for the role the SuperWoman, SuperWife, and SuperMom." Take your pick.

1. Sit down and make a list of all the roles you play and hats you wear in a week? a month?

2. Which roles have you fallen into because it was easier than starting a fight? Which ones did you volunteer and take on (not knowing fully all that was involved)?

3. Who are what is draining your energy these days?

4. What are some things, as a result of reading this chapter on balance, can you begin making some shifts, some eliminations, and start renegotiating in order to achieve more balance in your personal life and more equity in your relationships?

Chapter 5: Choices

"As a choice maker you learn to pause to sort out your priorities and motives, and the potentialities of a situation. You have to think through what your choices are, consider what choices will cost you emotionally, predict as best you can where the decision might lead you, and figure out intuitively what matters most to you." Such is the main point of this chapter.

1. How much time do you spend anguishing over choices? How much time do you spend beating up on yourself about the choices you've made, or failed to make?

2. What innovative ideas have you had lately that excited you but you didn't act on them? Why did you fail to act on them?

3. Finish this sentence. So, I failed in the past in doing . But, thank God, today is a new day. There's still a chance I can .

4. Finish this sentence. Today I choose .

Chapter 6: Inner Wisdom

If you making and keeping friends is difficult for your, this chapter may cause you some discomfort. But don't give up on yourself or on the chapter. Listen with your soul. Perhaps the spirit is speaking to you. "We each have an inner core where our deepest feelings, needs, and beliefs are buried, and we typically have an inner circle of friends with whom we share our inner core of feelings and needs."

1. How has friendship become more or less important in your life in recent years? Why?

2. Have you ever had a friendship end because of conflict? Do you now know ways to handle that conflict that might have saved that friendship?

3. Name those whom you count as your closest friends? What does each person bring to your life? Have you told them? Tell them.

4. How do you know when you've gone against your own best judgment and made a decision that transgresses who your are?

5. What ritual have you set up for spending time with yourself, for conferring with the spirit, for listening to that still small voice within?

Chapter 7: Danger

Each of us has been wounded in intentional and unintentional ways by society, by institutional religion, by those we love and who love us, and by complete strangers. "We can never hope to experience the repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation that we all look forward to in our faith until we are prepared to give both victims and perpetrators permission to talk openly about the ways in which we have all been wounded by misguided teachings, by bad (though well meaning) theology, by unreasonable cultural expectations thrust on us as women and men, and by some rather wrongheaded notions we have about what love and intimacy entail."

1. Can you name some of the way in which misguided teachings and unreasonable expectations have kept you stuck in unhealthy relationships and unable to see your potentialities as a woman of faith?

2. Name some women you know who lost their lives or suffered violently as a result of abusive relationships?

3. What can be done to stem the tide of violence against women? What can we do to help younger women recognize violence in their own relationships and to respond appropriately?

4. In what ways as women have we absorbed the message of our culture about violence and become abusers ourselves, perpetrating violence and evil against one another?

Chapter 8: Body

"Women are raised to hate their bodies. I don't a know a woman who doesn't wish she could change some thing about her body. What don't you like about your body?"

1. What about your body do you wish you could change?

2. What health conditions are common among the women in your family? When was your last physical exam? pap smear? breast exam?

3. What signals does your body send to let you know when you're tired and need to rest? stressed? sick? in over your head on something?

4. What has your body been trying to tell you lately?

5. When you think of growing old, who best models the kind of the woman you wish to be like most as you grow older: . Why?

6. Meditate on the words to this well known psalm (Psalm 139): "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it very well." Write a poem of praise and thanksgiving for your body, the one you were born with.

Chapter 9: Sacrifice

Who wants to hear the words, " It goes everything you're feeling right at the moment. This feels so real, so urgent, so right. But that's precisely why we need the Shulammite's caution to help us maneuver through the light-head world of love and romance. 'Slow down. Don't lose your head,' she warns women. 'Don't lose your self because you're likely to need her one day'"? But you would do well to heed the Shulammite's warning.

1. The next time this happens I will know it's the spirit warning me to slow down and pray before leaping.

2. How do you know when you're in love? When was the last time you felt that "thrilling, yet aching sense of yearning so strong that it causes everything else in sight to blur in comparison" sort of love?

If love brings such joy, why does it tend also to bring so much pain?

3. How do you know when you've fallen in love? What kind of woman are you when you're in the throes of love?

4. In what ways in the spiritual journey similar to the journey of falling and being in love with another human being? What does love teach us about God and the cycle of life?

Chapter 10: Sex and Love

At the heart of What Matters Most is the statement found in this chapter, "Never give up on finding the love you yearn after. To do so is to give up on life itself. Finding love, however, won't cure all your aches, nor will it protect you from the work of having to grown and learning to love yourself, and develop into the woman God created yo9u to be. Not even true love can rescue you from yourself."

1. What characteristics about yourself matter most to you such that you are no longer willing to sacrifice them for the world's approval?

2. What characteristics matter most to you in a potential mate?

3. What lessons should we be passing on to our daughters, granddaughters, and goddaughters about love and sex?

4. What was God's intention in creating sex?

5. What do you now know at this stage in your life are the differences between lust and intimacy, sex and love? How has your understanding changed over the years?

6. What is the positive principle God may be trying to teach you about who you are and where God wants to take you?