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Monthly Archives: October 2020

Minding My Own Business

29 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by Becky Taylor Haas in "This is Us", Pandemic, Racial tensions, Recovery journey, Relationships, Tragedies

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Watching the “This is Us” season premiere this week I finally saw some of my own thoughts and feelings mirrored by some of the characters.

And it wasn’t a comfortable thing.

Talking about the hard issues that we’ve been facing over the last few months has not been easy. Racial injustice, police policies, political differences, COVID responses, there’s a fight ready to break out all over. There is the way we discuss in our homes, with people who know us well. Then there is the way people address things on their Facebook pages or tweets or snapchats or whatever form of social media they’re using today. And then the way the media portrays the world, one sensation at a time.

I have to say that I’ve been searching for a better way to even begin a conversation. I made a little stab a few months ago, talking about what the world and racial tensions was like in the 60’s and 70’s when I was a girl, from my point of view.

But I find it hard to sympathize with everyone out there pointing fingers and blaming this group or that, this ideology or that, this public figure or that law enforcement system, or … put in whatever ones you’ve been hearing.

I think that blame isn’t the place to start.

As I’ve watched and listened to various viewpoints it occurred to me that almost all of them approach the terrible things happening in our world by not only blaming, but proceeding to also explain the motives of whoever they are blaming.

As if one person can ever know the thoughts, values, intentions of another person.

I think a better place to begin to make a difference amongst all the oppression in the world is in our own hearts.

I’m not copping out here.

I think it’s important to have a moral compass, to have a value system on which to make sober judgments about what is good and bad about our world. And it is important to take a stand for what is right.

But I think before I charge off with half-formed ideas, joining up with the masses of people protesting, I should know where I stand.

How do I measure up against the standards I want to hold other people to?

Over the last five and a half years I’ve done a lot of facing up to my own issues. In Celebrate Recovery I’ve learned that in order to understand my own faults and failures, my own wrong attitudes and actions, I have had to do a lot of digging.

I’ve had to face the truth inside me.

That I’ve been hurt. By specific people, in specific ways. By the way the world worked when I was a girl, the way children were not believed and certainly weren’t protected like they should have been.

Those hurts led me to have what CR calls hang-ups. Because I had wrong ideas about relationships and love, I acted in ways that made sense in my warped viewpoint, but which weren’t right.

And so as I let my hang-ups have more influence over me than truth did, I sank into habits that helped me cope with life, ways I would behave to not have to face things I wasn’t ready to acknowledge.

It was a very self-defensive way to live. I know the effects of the way I learned to deal with realities I didn’t want to face have gone on to affect my family. And it may take the rest of my life to convince them I’m not the same person anymore.

As I started facing my past hurts, I found that I was eager to dig in, dig up, clear out a space where I could rebuild my life with better materials.

In order to do that, I needed to take the time to examine where I’ve been, what happened to me, what I did as a result, and how it has affected me and others.

It’s a very humbling process.

One thing I was miserably short on 5+ years ago was mercy. I felt that if I could live through and thrive in spite of childhood abuse, other people should be able to handle their much lighter (in my viewpoint) problems without whining about it.

I had little patience for people who couldn’t get their act together.

Until I realized that pretty much everyone has times when their smooth looking life is really just an act.

And the last thing I needed was to continue pretending I was in control.

So in this process of dredging up my issues, sifting through all the muck, I’ve been finding wisdom and strength coming through. It’s been hard work, but it’s been worth it to find the good that God has worked out of all of this for me.

And in this continuing journey of recovery I’ve learned that I don’t know what anyone else’s story is, where they are in their journey.

And I am not their judge and jury.

I have learned to feel and show mercy.

So what does “This is Us” have to do with this? Well, I’m not going to spoil anything, but I think the season premiere did a really good job of showing that even the people we know well, that we are closest to, have had experiences and felt things we would never have imagined.

And even those people we know best, we don’t really know as much about as we thought.

Then there are people we don’t know at all, the ones we look at and make assumptions about, assign motives to, trivialize for not reacting the way we would, for holding a different viewpoint, or dismiss because they aren’t in our normal frame of reference.

And we may never know just how wrong the assumptions we’ve based our lives on can be.

So I don’t have any revolutionary answers to the conflicts we’re dealing with in society. But I do know that I can’t read your mind, and vice versa. And as valid as I feel my feelings and thoughts are to me, yours are equally valid to you.

And whether we reach out to each other or not, I know there is great value in doing the work of figuring out what I feel and why I feel it. Because in the light, some of the ways I’ve dealt with life in the past proved to be so pointless.

Laying out my past convoluted attempts to control my life, and looking at them through the lens of truth I find in my relationship with God, in his word and his Spirit in me have shown me many ways I wasted opportunities to grow. Times when fear of not knowing the next step kept me from ever taking it.

And now I think our world is ready for us to take some new steps, because what we’ve been doing hasn’t worked out that well.

I’d like to start by not assuming anything about you. I’d rather you tell me about you. What you’ve seen in your life. How it made you feel. Why you believe the way you do.

And I’ll tell you about me. And maybe in one person-to-person exchange after another we can see the wisdom and strength we’ve both learned in life, the good that has happened because of the bad.

Then maybe there would be less diatribes, less rants about whatever other-than-them group people think are causing the world’s problems.

Actions have consequences.

And I thank God every day that mine are bearable because of his mercy on me.

I’d like to think that with a lot more mercy and a lot less blame, I can take a new step and move past the injustices of the past, starting in my own heart, and reaching out to yours.

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In My Humble Opinion

15 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by Becky Taylor Haas in Death of a parent, faceliftbook journey, Recovery journey, Relationships

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Someday that will be my go to response when asked what I think about topics near and dear to my heart.

I’m not there yet, but I’m aimed in that direction.

It’s taken me 59 years to get to this point. So I think I can endure another few weeks of the current political climate without my head exploding.

I am weary. Between news, social media, and the opinions of the adamant minorities I do a lot of mental “la la la-ing”.

Let me explain that.

Back in the day Dear Husband and I were both very passionate about a lot of causes, and very vocal when we had the chance. There was no social media. There were occasions when people gathered, phone calls, letters to the editor, and responses to other passionate people stating their views.

We both did more than our share of sharing our opinions. Mine were often more vocal and immediate, his more mulled over and written down.

And after years of involvement in and advocating for those causes, we came up with a philosophy about causes in general that I still think applies. That is that with any given cause there are maybe 10% of people who feel strongly for it, and another 10% that are strongly opposed, and the other 80% who listen politely but can’t wait to be away from both extremes.

I was one of the 10%.

If you knew me very well at all, you probably knew where I stood on certain issues, and were not about to ask me for my opinion on anything.

I was, to many people I’m sure, like the adults in a Charlie Brown special. What they heard when I got on my soapbox was, “Wah, wah, wah.”

Now I’m the one hearing nonsense.

It’s not that I don’t care deeply about certain issues. In fact, they are probably still the ones I used to try to convince others of, with even more added.

It’s that I’ve finally come to agree with Dear Husband’s view that while 10% are for and 10% are against a cause, neither extreme is going to convince the other extreme to come over to their side. And the 80% in the middle aren’t interested enough to became fanatics.

And I can admit that as one of the 10% I really wanted to convert a hard-core, opposite-minded person to see the light of my position.

In my blog I share thoughts, feelings, and experiences that are very personal. And those of you who read always have the choice of skipping any post that you don’t like or agree with. I’m not out so much to persuade you to agree with me, as to just illustrate how I see the world and how God is changing me to see it more through his eyes.

This is one of those things. Even just a few years ago I would have thought nothing of taking any opportunity to share every thought I had with someone I was talking to, especially if I knew they were in the opposite camp on an issue.

As I look back on it I can see that this came out of my belief that I was right. And beyond that, that I was telling you the truth.

Now, after five and a half years of recovery, I will freely tell you that I’m not right about everything anymore. And while I want and try to speak truth, I’m trying to let God show me how to do it in love.

Because the way I used to be was not very loving at all.

I did not beat around the bush. I called it like I saw it. And I would often make outrageous assumptions, as if just because someone was on the other side of an issue I could say with confidence what their motives were, what their values were, what their intentions were. And none of them were good.

Maybe it’s aging. Maybe it’s weariness. But I’m not interested in heated debates where neither side listens to the other, where each just wants to be louder and more insistent and more smug in their own rightness.

Been there.

So ashamed that I’ve done that.

Four years ago I was finding my rhythm in recovery when my mom died, and I went through a time of what I call situational depression. I didn’t care. About anything.

I quit reading the paper or watching the news. I didn’t want to go anywhere or talk to anyone.

I made myself take advantage of free counseling offered by hospice. I only went once.

But I did go to a women’s Bible study at my church, and I faithfully attended Celebrate Recovery, making myself stay connected to other people I could trust and open up to about my numbness.

During that time a friend made a statement that has had a profound effect on me.

“I don’t have to have an opinion about everything.”

What?!

I had never considered it an option to not have strong thoughts about everything. But it was an intriguing idea.

Turns out that was the seed that has led me into a deeper relationship with God, a desire to learn about boundaries and what is truly mine to have a say over and what isn’t, and a new way of looking at other people.

Sitting here thinking about that phrase “in my humble opinion”, I can only think of a handful of people I’ve known in my life who truly held an humble opinion.

Of themselves, and of the world around them.

They would be people who didn’t think they really knew enough to state their take on an issue. Or that their thoughts were not as important as other people’s. And they certainly wouldn’t have posted their positions on social media for the world to see and comment on and engage in battle over.

But they would be the few people in this world that I would turn to when I really needed to find some clarity, to figure out how I felt or maybe should feel about something I was struggling with.

And therein lies the key.

Right now tempers are hot, righteous indignation is spewing all over from every side, and I have no interest in what people who are just like I used to be have to say.

Because I know how self-focused my stances sometimes were back in the day.

I cannot know everyone’s motives and values and intentions, and I’m not saying that they are all bad in the current world condition.

I’m honestly just sick and tired of everyone’s opinions.

If I really want to know yours, if you’re one of that little handful of people whose thoughts I value, I’ll ask.

And I’ll try not to tell you mine unless you really want to know.

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  • Minding My Own Business
  • In My Humble Opinion
  • Singing (or Praying) with a Mask On
  • Dump and Run
  • Making Plans

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Minding My Own Business

Watching the “This is Us” season premiere this week I finally saw some of my own thoughts and feelings mirrored by some of the characters. And it wasn’t a comfortable thing. Talking about the hard issues that we’ve been facing over the last few months has not been easy. Racial injustice, police policies, political differences, […]

In My Humble Opinion

Someday that will be my go to response when asked what I think about topics near and dear to my heart. I’m not there yet, but I’m aimed in that direction. It’s taken me 59 years to get to this point. So I think I can endure another few weeks of the current political climate […]

Singing (or Praying) with a Mask On

When I was growing up there was a popular phrase ‘Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it’. People used it to promote something they enjoyed and you weren’t willing to try. One of my favorite things to do as a girl was to sing. Especially when there was nothing else to do. Like driving 600+ […]

Dump and Run

My whole life I have been a perfectionist. I know this because very little ever happens that is exactly the way I want it. You see, in my mind I can see the end result the exact way I want it to be. But in order for that result to come about there are any […]

Making Plans

When was the last time your schedule was full? I can pretty safely say that, except for two short trips to a college campus to move a child out and then back in again, my schedule has been open for almost six months. I’m not working outside the home, I’m purposely not going out where […]

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