Category Archives: faceliftbook journey

Measuring Success

05 Thursday Dec 2019

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Last Thanksgiving Day I started blogging.

I wasn’t sure I’d make it this far at all. I wasn’t sure how often I wanted to post, how long I wanted my posts to be, what subjects I’d explore.

I wanted to always have a few pieces written ahead, so I could spend some time honing them before they went live.

And mostly I wanted to get into the habit of writing regularly, proving to myself that the books I feel I have in me could become a reality, that I have the stamina to work steadily at this thing that is not a chore, that I have loved since before I could read or write.

This thing I was made to do.

So I want to offer my sincere thanks to every person who has read any of my blog posts.

I’m not sure I can tell you how encouraging it is just to be read!

I started writing as soon as I could as a child. The other day I came across what my mom always said was one of my first masterpieces at about 3: a toilet lid cover on which I printed my formal name – Rebecca – with my mom’s lipstick. It never did wash out.

At about four years old I could spend hours going through school textbooks bigger kids gave me to “read” and circle every word I knew. Mostly “a”, “an”, “and”, and “the”. I recited a book to my first-grade class that my teacher thought I was reading, but I had memorized it from hearing it so much.

And by third grade I was finally published. My teacher mimeographed my story, “Sally and Her Horse”, and passed the beautiful purple pages out to the whole third grade! Thank you, Mrs. Brinker, for launching my career at the age of eight. My first book is going to be dedicated to you.

Has the blog been a success?

I feel like that’s a question some people may ask. I’m not a person who is driven by winning. I’m very competitive, but I love the doing of a thing while racing others or trying to produce the best thing I can for the excitement of the doing. I’m not focused around being the winner.

So success for me isn’t defined by how many people follow or read regularly. It’s more about, did I put forth my best effort? Did I dig deep and try to get to the heart of whatever I’m writing about? Did I say it in a way that entertained or enlightened or provoked thought in someone else?

Those aren’t things I can quantify. I can’t count the “Aha!” moments or the healing tears someone else was finally able to cry. I will probably never know if any of you have felt led to lift your face and cry out to God because something I wrote stirred a longing for more inside you.

But if I could, those would be the statistics that would bring me the most satisfaction. Because my goal is to help others not be afraid to face their own feelings by reading about some woman facing hers.

For those of you who like data, here are some of the things that can be numbered over my first year of blogging.

I’ve posted 55 times. That’s since November 22, 2018. One a week, with a double post during one week in January 2019.

So far I have 14 categories that I parcel out my thoughts into. There could have been a lot more, but I didn’t want to get too detailed.

I have 12 followers on WordPress (my blog home) and email, 83 on Facebook, and 1 on twitter.

I know, not high numbers. I sometimes get jealous when I hear of friends who launch something online and end up with a thousand followers before they know it. But I have to ask myself if large numbers are my goal, or if touching one person a week is worth it.

Speaking of that, I don’t get many comments or likes, but that’s ok with me. I don’t “like” everything I read on social media either. You’ll never find me sending along anything that requires you to type “Amen” and like, or send on to 10 of your friends.

But responses are appreciated when they happen.

My blog has been seen by 804 visitors over the past year, and they have looked at 1,220 posts. That’s an average of 22 views per post. I like that when someone comes by to read, they will browse a little and read a second post. Or more. Please feel free to do that as much as you’d like. That’s what they are there for.

My average words per post is 1,004. I don’t know if that’s a good number, but it’s about how much I need to round out a train of thought each week. No one has ever commented that they are too long or too short. And the one double issue was because I needed to tell a whole story and didn’t want to leave anyone hanging for a week. And it couldn’t be said in 1,000 words.

Most of my readers are in the United States where I live. But I have been tickled to find that 97 times people in 16 other countries have stopped by to see what’s up. As the child of very mission-minded parents, that’s something I’m proud of, that people in other countries can read my thoughts, can see what God is doing in my life.

And looking forward, I plan to keep on writing and posting once a week.

Because I didn’t run out of stories to tell. (That was a real fear at first.)

And though I am not mainly about reaching milestones of how many views and followers and likes, I am about reaching people. So I would like to ask a little favor of you who drop in from time to time and like what you read.

Please share it with others.

I’m not going to imagine all the ways you could do that. But I’ll make a couple suggestions.

If you read a blog and really like it, feel free to repost it to your friends. I make my blogs public so that they can be spread, and you have my permission to pass them on, especially if you think someone would enjoy or benefit from them.

If you’ve ever enjoyed one, take a minute to visit the site and look through the categories and maybe catch a couple more related ones that you missed. They are there to be read, anytime.

And if I quote a scripture or a song and it speaks to you, pass that on to someone else who needs it as well.

Because our stories aren’t just ours to savor and relive in our own minds. They are to share, to connect with others that we may never meet in this life.

But we weren’t made just for this life.

Thanks for being a part of faceliftbook on my site at haasmom.blog.

I wrote it just for you.

The ever-changing view

07 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by in Asthma, faceliftbook journey

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Pieces of the puzzle came together for me last week.

But I’m having trouble seeing the big picture as I’ve been searching for those missing pieces for a year now.

It’s easy to remember when it started. It was November 9, Oldest Son’s birthday last year, and we were on a college visit with Middle Son when I woke up with what seemed like a cold.

Except I didn’t get over it.

I’ve already written a lot about this, so I won’t repeat it all. But something was different about this feeling. Mostly that I lost my senses of smell and taste, and my sinuses always seemed congested. And I was often hoarse or unable to sing.

It just came to me as I was writing this, that this whole scenario happened to me before, a long time ago. Don’t you love it when one memory triggers another?

That time it also lasted about a year, from deep winter of early 1995 to late spring of 1996. The worst part for me was losing my voice. At that time we were very involved in our church, and it was like torture to not be able to sing out, or often to even talk loud enough to be heard.

I remember at the time I felt it was God pulling me back from some pride issues I was having. It may well have been his way of reining in my ego! And when I came to face it and learned to have humility about whatever gifts and talents God had given me, my voice returned to normal.

If I had documented every time I had these same symptoms I think I would find a pattern of my “normal” being limited by things I never thought to look for.

Sometimes I’ve been diagnosed with bronchitis, even pneumonia. More often with a sinus infection. For all these years, other than my long-ago original diagnosis of asthma, health care professionals have not made much of a connection between asthma and my issues.

And not one of them ever thought to test me for allergies.

Until after my near-death experience a few weeks ago.

The Monday following my most recent attack I was with my asthma and allergy doctor. So far we had been tackling asthma issues. I had participated in a couple clinical trials, and found some medications that worked better than what I had been using.

I was able to brainstorm with my doctor for a few minutes, and he was adamant that what I had experienced was not an asthma attack, but an allergic reaction.

And he was right.

I finally remembered taking Aleve an hour before I couldn’t breathe, and as I’ve looked back over the last year I realize I had been taking a lot of Aleve, especially before my worst attacks.

Yes, some of them were asthma, but some were allergic reactions. And some of my asthma triggers are turning out to be things I’m allergic to.

Which brings me up to last week, when I finally got tested for environmental sensitivities.

The worst thing I heard was that I’m allergic to trees. All the trees. All the ones I’ve loved my whole life. My beloved birch trees, that I used to climb as a girl. The willow I loved to drape around me like a beautiful dress and dance around in it.

And the maples I dug up from in front of my parent’s house and planted in our brand new freshly married yard, with dreams of my own someday children climbing and playing in their grown-up shade.

And the pieces fell into place. Why I can’t tolerate being outside for too long. Because it’s not just trees. Add grasses and weeds.

And it isn’t because I don’t want to take a walk or run around on a ball field or explore a forest.

If you could have seen me as a child you would be amazed that I could ever be happy inside four walls.

But for years it has been increasingly harder to enjoy, and I’m really sad to see the reason. Now I have to deal with it.

I’ve been referring to this whole process like it’s a puzzle and pieces have been missing. But when I started writing this post the words to one of my favorite songs as a teenager popped into my head:

“My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue
An everlasting vision of the ever-changing view
A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold
A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold” (“Tapestry”, Carole King)

That idea of my life as a tapestry has always intrigued me. I do a little needlework, and the backside of a piece often looks drastically different from the finished side. But since adolescence I’ve always been aware that at any time I may be seeing the “pretty” side of my life, or I may have emerged behind what is easily seen to get a different perspective on my situation.

I think I really want to see this as a tapestry instead of a puzzle.

And there’s more. Dust mites. All the dust mites.

I have always known I can’t stir up the dust. This is not a new thing, but I was not constantly plagued with the physical aftermath before this past year.

My way of dealing with this has been to avoid cleaning. Even as a girl I would rather deal with laundry or dishes than vacuum and dust. And as an adult I decided it was better to not kick up the dust so I wouldn’t be sneezing and blowing my nose for days.

So I’m sunk, outside or in.

When I look at this section of my tapestry, will I see God working in the background to move me into a different season of life where he has things for me to do away from the things that cause me discomfort? Or will I see only what I can’t do or be around anymore, things that used to bring me such joy?

And between the two outlooks, I think I’d rather this be about learning a lesson in obedience from God and not about the restrictions imposed by allergies.

And why can’t it be both?

Because it isn’t just funny shaped pieces that somehow fit together.

Life is so much more a moving, shifting work of art. It’s a living canvas, a cloth knit with a changing palette of elements.

And just like in the act of writing these thoughts I saw a thread that entered the scene over twenty years ago, where I am now, whatever is ahead, is no accident.

This design has a designer. And though I may not like or understand what is being woven in me over this past year, I can choose to step off.

And lift my face.

And see that it’s just a small part, a unique and necessary pattern, in a masterpiece.

Freedom to and from

22 Thursday Aug 2019

Posted by in Childhood, faceliftbook journey, Recovery journey

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When I hear the same thing from several directions in my life my ears perk up, because it’s often God trying to get through to me.

Today it’s the concept of freedom.

I have been working through the things my therapist and I have brought to light, because I have to analyze things in several ways to really get it.

I’ve always been a very tactile person, and visual. And aural. And vocal. I suppose if I could smell and taste an idea that would be perfect

Ideally I would be able to fully see and hear, while at the same time restating out loud and writing down complete thoughts as they come to me. And drawing beautiful pictures to illustrate. (That part is in my dreams.) The result would be both a complete restating of what I got out of the experience, as well as an impression of what it all meant that I am willing to alter as I gain more understanding of the facts.

Free thinking.

I guess that would be one way to define the way my mind works. I let my thoughts go in different directions, and try to glean from them the best ideas, leaving the inferior ones behind. Free to pick and choose the ones that best support whatever I am coming to think about any topic.

So the topic of freedom keeps coming up.

The first condition I’ve uncovered in my therapy is that I have lived in a state of persistent paralysis. One way to describe this is that it’s like the common dream where you are in a situation and helpless to do whatever it is you need to do: scream, fight, run, whatever would get you out of the conflict you are in to safety.

Years ago when Switchfoot released “Dare You to Move” it resonated with me, though at the time I didn’t connect how paralyzed I really felt. In many many areas of my life there were so many things I longed to do that I could imagine in intricate detail, but when it came time to step out and do, well, I was stuck.

I’m still in the process of working through this, and true to who I am, I am examining this revelation in lots of ways. One of them is to search out what the Bible has to say about being paralyzed. One passage that came up doesn’t use the word, but encompasses the idea:

For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Galatians 5:14 (The Message)

Self-interest vs. free spirit.

If there are any two words I would have used to describe myself for most of my life, it would be those: free spirit.

By which I would mean not tied down to any one activity or course of action, versatile and able to go with the flow of life, willing to change things up to suit the current circumstances.

In my mind I am this free spirit. But the reason I think of myself this way is because by allowing myself an out, I am able to protect myself from situations that are threatening or uncomfortable.

In other words, I’m free to walk away whenever I feel like it. Which is another way of saying, I’ve really been about keeping myself safe for most of my life.

And that doesn’t feel like freedom to me, because for many years I’ve been on guard, waiting for the times I’ll need to walk away to keep from getting hurt.

Galatians says my self-interest is in direct opposition to the free spirit. So what does that mean?

So another source I look to for help in figuring things out is The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I regularly read through this, taking about a year, as I often have to reread one sentence a dozen times to let it sink in.

And today I read a passage about how the enemy can’t always use bad circumstances to draw us away from God, because God often does his most important work in us while we are going through trials. In this paragraph is this:

” One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself – creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His.”

(That was two sentences. See what I mean?)

If I’m reading this correctly, Lewis is saying that service to God is perfect freedom, because the person’s will freely conforms to God’s will for them.

In this sense, freedom means a giving up of my own self-determination to let God decide what is best for me. And by giving up my rights to myself, God gives me life full and overflowing with his love and goodness.

So back to Galatians. A free spirit (and I still love that phrase, love that it’s in the Bible!) really means a person who is so sure that God is able to do beyond what they can ask or imagine, that they live giving up their own plans daily to let God work out his plan through them.

What I’m starting to see, with the persistent paralysis of my life, is a woman who has been anything but free. And as my impotence is falling away from me, I’m finding I don’t have to stay stuck in old patterns of thinking.

There is a truly free spirit inside of me that has been biding her time, waiting to be allowed the luxury of resting in the knowledge that God has a good plan for me, and I need to let him bring it about.

I don’t have to do this on my own.

The Direction of Upright

15 Thursday Aug 2019

Posted by in faceliftbook journey, Recovery journey

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I’ve started seeing a therapist.

I’ve wanted to for a long time, and a couple months ago I finally decided it was the right time.

And to give a little more background, I have also been meeting for the past year with a mentor, a Christian woman, through a unique local ministry that provides this service for free.

I feel like a totally different person than the woman I was when I first walked in to Journey of the Heart last July, looking for perspective. Over this past year I’ve learned to step back and look at day to day situations in light of the truth instead of through my emotions.

I’ve learned a lot about boundaries. How I didn’t grow up with many firm ones, and why I never learned how to set them in many areas of my life. I started setting them and experienced great peace in being able to say no.

I learned to respond instead of reacting. I began to make decisions based on what I was really willing and able to do instead of what others wanted me to do. I learned to not make excuses for taking care of myself.

Which felt really weird after so many years of putting everyone else first.

I think the timing of all this has been good for me and my family. My youngest is now sixteen, so as young adults I think they all benefited from my not doing as much for them. They now take care of more of their own things, which will help them as they transition to school or apartments.

Not to mention that after more than thirty years as a mom, I have my own things I’ve been looking forward to doing.

Probably the most significant change is that I have a mentor who faithfully turns my face back to God. Pretty much every time we meet she reminds me to ask for God’s input before I make any decision, and to search the Bible for direction.

I welcome the reminders to do the first thing first.

You would think that after having a relationship with Jesus for most of my life, that would be the most natural thing to do. Yet it isn’t.

So after almost a year of being mentored, there were things we had talked about that I felt a need to go into more deeply with someone trained to help a person know how to deal with their thoughts and feelings.

It was time to look for a therapist.

As with finding my mentor, God brought forward the right information at the right time. Even though the people giving me advice didn’t have all the facts clear, I ended up finding a Christian therapist that is helping me find freedom from things that have held me captive since childhood.

I’ll tell you a little about the therapy, but it really is different in the experience than in the description. And you can look up the description if you are interested in knowing more about it. I feel people like me, who are ready to dive in and tackle whatever issues come up benefit a lot from this therapy.

Splankna Therapy, according to the website at Splankna Therapy Institute ‘is the first Christian protocol for mind-body psychology.’ What happens in the practice of the Splankna Protocol is that I (mind, body, heart, spirit) tell my therapist where my body is holding on to the emotions that resulted from traumatic situations in my life. In isolating them she figures out what emotions or situations are keeping me stuck in reliving old hurts instead of healing and moving on.

The most satisfying part for me is that I pray and release the hold these things have had on me, and my therapist also prays healing over me.

It sounded like hooey to me. Bunk. Rubbish. Nonsense.

Then I tried it. And after only three visits I’m noticing real changes in the way I do life.

I have been able to name things that have held me back, put me on the wrong track, distracted me from my goals for most of my life. I have experienced NOT falling back into the same patterns of self-defense and control that have become second nature to me.

I have had revelations of lies I have believed, and been floored that I ever would have listened to them in the first place. And I have been able to call them lies and let the father of lies know that he doesn’t have a hold on me any more in that area.

I don’t know how long I will continue, but I am excited to be freed from more of my self-inflicted chains. I have tried to control my life, my environment, my safety and well-being since I was six years old, and I am so ready to hand it back to God, who is the only one who knows what my next steps should be.

Both of these ventures, being mentored and going to a therapist, flow out of the last four years of Celebrate Recovery. I now deal, one day at a time, with my hurts, hang-ups and habits; I identify my character flaws, my faults and shortcomings and ask God to remove them from me; I learn to recognize when I’m doing something hurtful and make amends more quickly; as I am hurt again I make the choice to forgive before letting the wrong fester into a much bigger wound than it needs to be. And most surprising, I have become willing to ask for help.

A neat thing has been happening with my therapist. She prays over me before we start, and she prays again when we are finished. And in her prayers, God puts thoughts in her mind, words to say, that are uniquely meaningful to me.

At our last session she prayed that I would be in line with the plumb line.

My whole life I have loved plumb lines. You pull them out and they are covered with purple chalk, and a weight hangs at the end and when you hold it up it hangs down and gives you a true straight up and down direction. If it’s against a wall, someone is holding the top and someone secures the weight when it’s hanging straight, and plucks the string to leave a straight line to orient to.

And in my life, I am seeking to find the plumb line that shows me I am oriented to God’s plan for me.

My therapy is showing me how I have not let the weight determine the direction of the line, how I have pulled it out in the directions I wanted it to go, snapped it and left a crooked, skewed chalk line that I have followed blindly.

I so much need there to be a strong hand holding my life line, and I need to see where God means for it to go, unaffected by the circumstances of my past and present. I need to see the direction of upright.

Developing a willingness…

25 Thursday Jul 2019

Posted by in faceliftbook journey, Gratefulness journal

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This week I’ve had no idea what I wanted to write about. In fact, it’s past the time I usually post my blog, and I’m just now starting to type, so we’ll see where this goes.

It’s not that there aren’t things I want to tell you, it’s that it’s better to wait until I have a clue how I feel about them before inflicting them on you!

Maybe the place I’ll start is with patience.

I was talking to my mentor today, and as the conversation flew from one topic to another, we started to see a theme running through the many things I’ve been through over the past couple weeks and the many things I’m hoping will happen soon – like yesterday.

I need patience.

In my mind I have spent lots of time working out scenarios. Not just for stories, but for my life. If this thing happens my response would be… for all kinds of situations.

So when there is something I’d like to happen, it’s already accomplished in my mind. The real world just needs to catch up to me so I can let it play out the way I’ve imagined it.

In the last few years I’ve experienced a change in that way of thinking. I’ve learned that most of the situations I would work through in my head were things that never happen, that never will happen. And even if they did, they wouldn’t play out just the way I think they would.

Because I don’t control all the variables.

So I’ve spent most of my life working out solutions to problems that don’t exist.

You’d think that would have taught me something. Like that there is a better use of the wee hours of the night than thinking through endless tragedies. Sleeping for instance.

Gradually I’m finding that I don’t follow those trains of thought down the paths of disaster like I used to. As my mentor tells me, wouldn’t it be better if I lived in the now instead of in the what ifs?

So about a year ago I learned how to stop my wild thoughts in their tracks, and ask some simple questions: What is the truth of this situation? What are the facts I can know? What good does it do me to worry about this? Why don’t I try handing it over to God and letting it go?

Not that I do that all the time, never perfectly, sometimes I have to be hit over the head again, usually by my mentor when she hears me trying to take control of the whole world because things just aren’t going the way I know they could.

Have patience, she’ll say. There is value in the waiting.

So there are things I long to tell you about. Things I am eager to do, but that are not in my power to make happen right now. So I have to wait. So do you.

Because a really good story has many components. Beginning, middle, end. The resolution of some conflicts. Triumph of good over evil. And if I start rambling about what might happen, what I’d like to do, without any real sense of how it will go when it does happen, you would miss out on some great stories.

I am waiting for many things. Mostly for God’s timing, which can seem impossibly out of reach. I want to be the kid on vacation asking, “Are we there yet?” every five minutes.

Like that kid, when I stop being so impatient and start looking around at the surroundings God has placed me in at this moment, I start seeing what I was in too much of a hurry to see before.

That the purpose of my life was never to get all the things done I’d like to do. Frankly, God doesn’t need me to do anything for him in this world. Not that he doesn’t have work he wants me to do, just that he is all sufficient without my help. He is not any more God because I am able to do some small thing for him.

Yet at the same time, before he ever created me, God had a plan far beyond anything I could imagine, in which I would receive gifts and talents and dreams from him and in some way use them to bring glory to him and love and hope to those around me.

And as I am learning to pull back on my own mental reins and see where I am more often than where I think I will someday be, I find that in the day, the moment I am in, there are things I can be doing that I never noticed before.

Like gratitude. That was an area I knew I wanted to grow in, but I kept putting it off, thinking that if I could take a weekend to think about it I could figure out how to be grateful.

But it wasn’t anything I did that brought about a healing for me in this area. It was in a therapy session I recently began going to, in which someone who knows almost nothing about me prayed over me to have a spirit of gratitude towards God.

I don’t know how that worked, but it did. I still haven’t gotten the discipline to add to my list daily, but since last week I’m up another forty items on my list to one thousand gifts, and still many more to write down when I take the time.

Just that one improvement, counting blessings instead of potential tragedies, is making a real impact in my life. Because I’m seeing that in these times of waiting, there is also time to enjoy the lull.

My mentor also pointed out that patience isn’t something we need to seek from God, it’s a gift, part of the fruit of the Spirit. Something we should be able to tap into because that very Spirit of the Living God lives inside all who believe in Jesus.

In The Message that fruit of patience means “developing a willingness to stick with things.”

Not try to get beyond, not long for them to be over and done. Stick with.

So while I’m waiting for the things I hope God has for me, I will stick with him. No matter how long this takes.

Being More Undignified

07 Thursday Mar 2019

Posted by in Childhood, faceliftbook journey, Gratefulness journal

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My teenage daughter can back me up on this.  I don’t know how to dance.  But that doesn’t stop me.

And three times in just over three months I’ve been to concerts with that daughter, finally, after way too many years.  I have found it much easier to be a dancing fool at this stage of life than I did as a younger woman with feet that could take all the bouncing around.

Growing up as the daughter of a Free Will Baptist preacher, it was drilled into me that dancing was bad.  Worse than playing cards, but not as bad as drinking.  So I danced with my girlfriends in their homes, but never in public.  The bump and the hustle were our favorites, ones where you stand next to each other and all do the same moves.  And moving to the music felt so good.

I  didn’t go to the same concerts as my peers.  Dad was big into southern gospel music, promoting “gospel sings” at local churches, high schools and other venues.  So I was around a lot of music and musicians my whole life, hanging out backstage with the bands, even performing on stage with my family during intermissions.  I regularly helped unscrew microphone stands and carry them out to the buses to pack up after concerts.

Music was important to my parents, who were often part of a gospel quartet, and Mom played piano at church.  Dad helped start a local Christian radio station that is still operating, where I spent a lot of time since Dad was the first general manager, and our church often held events there.  I knew the music and the people who made it.  I had an autograph book  filled with illegible scrawls from dozens of southern gospel performers.

I was probably twenty before I went to my first non-Christian concert, Speedway Jam, an all day mid-summer festival that drew in more alcohol and drugs than I’d ever seen, passed around freely.  I remember there was a lot of flat-out stupid behavior that went on, and I participated.

A girl near our island of blankets and coolers had drunk so much that she passed out.  I recall feeling helpless.  Her “friends” were oblivious to her condition.  Her skin was getting burnt in the hot sun so I rigged up a makeshift shade cover by moving their coolers near her head and draping a beach towel over it.  This was before cell phones, bottles of water, and I think even before 911 in our area.

I remember being struck with how stupid we were all acting, pursuing pleasure without regard for others, without really caring about ourselves, drinking in the hot sun, burnt and dehydrated and acting like complete fools.  The first part of Titus 3:3 could have been written about our gang:

For we too were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved by various                             passions and pleasures…

Shamefully undignified.

I made it to a few more concerts but I could never forget that girl, and I gave up my senseless partying behaviors after that.  I still enjoyed my 70’s and early 80’s rock music, but I had no desire to venture back into the culture of alcohol and drugs that went with that scene.

More than ten years after that, Dad, who was still hosting a Sunday morning radio show before church time, mentioned a new Christian station was starting in town. Southern gospel no longer appealed to me, so I wondered if contemporary Christian music was more like my rock music.

And in the fall of 1992  YES-FM went live on the air  with Steven Curtis Chapman’s “The Great Adventure”, and that’s what life has been every day ever since!

That moment, listening when YES-FM went live, stands out as one of those mile markers  where I think about life before and after that point.   I can honestly say that in these almost twenty-seven years, the music and artists I’ve discovered, the concerts I’ve attended, the DJ’s and employees of the station I’ve heard and met, the prayers that have been prayed for me, the privilege of praying for and supporting this ministry, have been THE MOST DIRECT way God shows himself to me.  I would not be as in love with Jesus as I am without YES-FM.

Just thinking about it makes me want to drop to my knees in thanksgiving.

In the early years of YES they had several $5 concerts every year, and we went to almost all of them.  But after we had more little ones, it was years between concerts, and once my two oldest kids moved out I didn’t have anyone willing to go with me.  Until I talked my youngest into using one of the tickets I’d won (on YES-FM!) to go to Big Church Night Out in November.  And then Winter Jam mid-February and Toby Mac Hits Deep Tour two weeks later.

When I have the opportunity to be totally immersed in something good, that has gotten me through the deaths of my loved ones, that has given me hope that whatever I face will somehow work to draw me closer to the one who created and loves me beyond measure, I don’t know how I can do anything less than dance with abandon.

King David got it.  In II Samuel 6 he had been trying to bring the ark of God home. This was a serious thing because in the days before Jesus came it was where God told them he lived.  After some mishaps David finally went after the ark himself and brought it to Jerusalem, where he celebrated its return.

For me God lives in music.  I love studying the Bible and a good, challenging sermon, but where I feel fully in the presence of God is while singing at the top of my lungs.  And for most of my life, up until that day in 1992, that place where God lives so transparently in me was out of my reach.  Music and songs  spoke to me, but not of God or of his desires for me, only of those old passions and pleasures.

In one pivotal moment the presence of God was brought into my life, through music on YES-FM, the every day miracle of a relationship that changes me continually.

So my response to getting to be in the loud, bright, pounding, screaming, reckless presence of God in a way that gets around all my defenses, that opens me up to pure praise and humbling worship, uninhibited and abandoned, drenched in love and gratitude, is much the same as David’s famous answer to the disapproval of his wife for his own celebrating: I will become even more undignified than this!

And look eagerly for the next chance to dance in the presence of God.

Taking a day off

28 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by in faceliftbook journey, Recovery journey

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It’s been one of those weeks.  I have a couple of pieces in the works, but none of them are crying out, “Finish me!”  Maybe because things keep somersaulting and jumping up in totally different places all over my life lately.  My days are just not playing out like I expected.

If you are a mom, or have one, maybe you can relate.  You map out a day in a way that would fulfill some of your needs, and find a dozen detours where you end up taking care of other people and their obviously more urgent issues.  And as the next day starts, your own list is still as long as the day before.

A little over a year ago I decided to stop putting myself last.  Okay, don’t pitch a fit. That is not the same thing as putting myself first!  Because that’s not my intention.

I was deep into an intensive Bible study, and while facing some hurts from my past, I realized I’d let those situations affect me my whole life.  I had learned a lot of ways to handle relationships that weren’t healthy, and that left me wondering why no one was taking care of my needs the way I tried to look out for others’.  So as part of my recovery journey, I decided a couple of changes were necessary.  I needed to quit trying to fix those around me by doing things for them that they could do for themselves.  And I needed to start doing things for myself that would help me become the person God created me to be.

So over the last year I’ve done a number of new things, and returned to some others that excite me and spur me on to deeper personal growth.  And as fun as some of those activities were, the hardest part was walking away from home, leaving my family to fend for themselves for a few hours or days.

Spoiler alert.  They all survived.  But there were times I drove off leaving frustrated teens behind, wondering who was going to take care of whatever they wanted me to do before I left, hoping they would figure it out.

And I also survived.  Cranking up my YES-FM, looking away from the rear view mirror, heading out to a time or place where I could start looking to God for direction with no interference.  Is this where you want me to go next?  Is this dream you’ve put in my heart your desire for me, God?

Because sometimes I can’t hear him in all the noise of life.

And it doesn’t help that I’m not a good finisher.  I excel at starting things, especially lists of things I’d like to do, or have someone else do, but not so successful at wrapping things up.

Someday I’ll connect all the dots from my past that will make me say, “Aha!  This is why I’m like this!”, and when I do I’ll share some of that epiphany.  But while I’m working on that, I’m finding it is possible to change.  Just because I have a history of not doing this or that, it doesn’t mean I can’t learn how.  And just because I have dozens of unfinished projects in process, I can choose to follow one through to completion.

“One day at a time” is a familiar phrase to me, one I’ve repeated hundreds of times over the last almost four years, and it gives me hope for each new day.  Because when I have those days where nothing new is accomplished, I know another day is going to follow.  The same when everything falls apart or even when everything runs smoothly, I’m still living it one day at a time.

As I look back over the last year of taking some time out for me, I have a clear knowledge that God was leading me through these experiences.  I could list all the things I did, but I’d rather tell you how they’ve changed my life.

I made connections with a new writing group, not knowing that my local one was going to fold by year’s end.  I have been forced to face my own physical limitations and it’s shown me it’s ok to say no.  I’ve found I’m more artistically creative than I knew.  I’m able to appreciate my family’s unique gifts better than before.  God gave me a new friend, one I love deeply and can’t wait to spend time with soon.

I want to share with you a little piece of writing that I grew up seeing all over my Mamaw’s house, both the more well-known short version and the full version.  I believe God put that in front of my eyes as a girl to prepare me for the day almost four years ago when I walked into Celebrate Recovery for the first time and God began a total overhaul of me that isn’t anywhere near done, and has brought the most abundant living I’ve known so far.

If you’ve never read this before, let it sink in.  Break it down, phrase by phrase, and you might want to make a change, too.  Because it’s never too late to start living the life God wants you to discover.  One day at a time.

Prayer for Serenity

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it;
trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to Your will;
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Trains of Thought

07 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by in faceliftbook journey

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alone on trainI tend to go where my thoughts take me.  I have always been this way, jumping from one train of thought to another.  For instance in this picture on the way to Chicago last summer, I was copying sermon notes, studying “one thousand gifts” and journaling about it, writing in a prayer journal, and conversing with my family.  Like the train we were on, my thoughts had many destinations.

Unlike the route, I often switch easily from one to another of the many tracks in my mind.   I  see obvious connections even though others don’t always follow my trains of thought.  I’m telling you this because as I pursue this need to write and share with other people, I want you to see how my mind works.  And maybe you’ll be one of the few who try to follow what I’m saying.

So for instance, in a recent post I talked about why I have no choice but to pour love lavishly on my daughter’s foster babies.  And in my mind that connects to my Grandpa C.  And that connects to my dad, and his dad, and poverty, and my Papaw’s alcoholism, and lost opportunities, and back to my dad, and how he never learned good boundaries, and on and on.

I could keep writing my story and never come to the end of it.  Which is good if you like reading these posts!  So don’t be surprised if I go places you never saw coming.

There aren’t  many people in my life that have stuck with me throughout this journey.  There’s my family, siblings, extended family who I love dearly but have never gotten to know as closely as I’d like.  Friends that are almost all in my church family, who have the gift of extending grace to this passionate, bullheaded person.  And my forever family at Celebrate Recovery.

I’ve reached a point where I know I’m a loner, but I also know God created us to be in relationship with each other, and in recent years I’ve been digging deeply into why I’ve struggled to let anyone see the inner me.  So as I am opening up, I am feeling vulnerable but also expectant that God will take my words and help other people see that it’s okay to be real with others.

I think it’s funny that I have no problem connecting ideas in my mind, but in real life I stink at cultivating relationships with real people.

In addition to chronicling my experience with my daughter’s fostering adventure, I’ll continue into adoption, my personal recovery journey, and along with that all the ways that God has challenged me to give up my “rights”, and willingly give everything back to him.  As my mind is thinking over just those things, connections from my childhood pop up, mapping out how I got from there to here.

And why I’m not anywhere near ready to stay where I am now.

Just over six years ago I was at a writer’s conference I’ve attended for years.  The speaker talked about blogging and ways to get your name out there, about building your platform,  your specialty, or what you are known for writing.  Like if you say horror stories, Stephen King comes to mind.  Or pioneer family life you’d think Laura Ingalls Wilder.

He challenged us to tweak what already existed to make it our own.  So he threw out the question, “What would you call Facebook if it were aimed at women fifty and over?”  My hand shot into the air and I immediately said, “Faceliftbook!”

He loved the idea, and I ran with it.  As far as naming my blogsite, that is.  It has been six years since, and the name has grown on me, even though I never did much with my blog back then.  I set the impossible task of posting every day, and it only lasted a few days.  Lesson learned.

This time around I decided to shoot for a weekly post, which I’ve successfully done for 12 weeks now – hey that’s almost 3 months!  And though I’m not consciously trying to work in a direct reference in every post, I’ve decided my blog is about helping us all lift our faces to God.

Acts 17:26-28
  Starting from scratch, he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living  so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn’t play hide-and-seek with us. He’s not remote; he’s near.  We live and move in him, can’t get away from him! One of your poets said it well: ‘We’re the God-created.’
My biggest struggle in life has been facing God.  And my biggest problem is that I want to look everywhere else for him but where I need to be looking.  I turn to my circumstances or my problems, to how different my life would be if everyone around me would just shape up and take responsibility.
So as the blurb on the top says,  this is one woman’s attempt to lift my face and see beyond my circumstances.  Because they truly don’t define me.  They don’t really say that much about me.  They are pictures taken from a train on paths that can change as quickly as my mind switches from one thought to another.  What matters is who I choose to look to in the middle of wherever I find myself.
And since I can’t get away from him, and he is near, and he wants me to seek after him, I choose to look at the one who created me, trains of thought and all.