Category Archives: faceliftbook journey

In My Humble Opinion

15 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by 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.

The Master Stroke

13 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by in Childhood, faceliftbook journey

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The women’s bible study at church is working through I Corinthians, and this week, once again, there was a phrase that sang out to me in The Message paraphrase that I’m using right now. It came after Paul reminds the people of Corinth that they’ve been cleaned up by Jesus, and that they have gifts and benefits given straight from God.

How often I lose sight of that. I mean, I am very sure of my salvation. I believe that God’s promises are true. But I don’t always act like I recognize his gifts and benefits to me.

For me it starts with knowing him. It’s a work in progress. One step at a time.

You might think that would be a simple thing. Just pray for God to reveal himself to me.

But I think it would be absolutely devastating to see God fully, all at once. I like his way better, giving me one glimpse at a time of new facets of who he is.

What gets me, once I “get” something I never could make sense of before, is how obvious it seems now that I recognize it. Why couldn’t I see what was right in front of me?

The Bible also says that the reality of God can’t be denied, that he is revealed in his creation all around us.

But that doesn’t mean I realize how it points right to God as the creator of it all. Sometimes I refuse to recognize the obvious.

When I was a girl there was a wildly creative and artistically talented woman in our church, Sister Dorothy. (Every adult was Sister or Brother to me.) If Pinterest had been around then she would have been the queen. In my eyes she could do anything you could imagine.

I loved going to her house and seeing peeled apples drying to become the faces of old men and women. At Halloween she would dress up as a witch and sit on our front porch in a rocking chair, totally still. Until someone walked up and she’d creak the chair.

I still have some of the Barbie doll dresses she made for us girls, with rickrack and sequins and rich feeling fabrics.

But my favorite thing Sister Dorothy ever did was what we called a “chalk talk” at church.

My dad was the pastor, and occasionally he’d ask her to do a chalk talk during his sermon. She would set up her easel on the organ side, and as he came up to preach she would pick up her chalk pastels.

I paid more attention to those sermons than any others. No surprise when I finally figured out I’m a very visual learner. I was engaged in listening because I was always trying to figure out what the drawing would be. She usually tied it in somehow to the topic of his teaching, and I wanted to be able to guess before anyone else.

She didn’t make it easy. It wasn’t obvious as she got started. Just nebulous blobs of color, never starting at one side and moving to another, but some here, some there, with no rhyme or reason I could see.

After the first layer of color, Sister Dorothy would build them up, one on top of another. I would suspect a sunset maybe, or a forest, but it was all still undefined, no recognizable shapes emerging.

As the sermon progressed, she would add shading to show light and darkness, maybe a hint of whether it was morning or night, indoors or outside.

And still I waited eagerly to find out what it all meant, what it was going to be.

But the thing is, it already was, before she put it down on paper. She had thought it out, knew how she wanted to draw it, had an order she followed, and could see the finished product before she ever touched chalk to paper.

At the end of I Corinthians chapter 1 Paul tells us that for those of us personally called by God himself that Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one.

He thought this up, from start to finish, how that sin would enter the world because people make wrong choices, but even so God wanted us to be with him forever. So he made it possible for my sin to become invisible to him when he sees me through the blood of Jesus – a miracle. And then he lets me have a close and very personal, intimate relationship with Jesus, who leads me and teaches me every day to take hold of the wisdom he offers.

But looking at it with my little girl eyes I never could have grasped all he had done, all the things that already were and that I could have for the asking.

It has taken me all these years to be willing to ask and ask again, what else do you want me to see? Where am I looking and not recognizing your hand, God, in everyone and everything around me? What am I missing?

The scripture that blew me away always sounded a little corny to me, until God brought Sister Dorothy to mind as I read through it last week.

I Corinthians 2:1 – You’ll remember, friends, that when I first came to you to let you in on God’s master stroke, I didn’t try to impress you with polished speeches and the latest philosophy.

What does that even mean?

I’ll tell you the picture that I saw in my head.

Sister Dorothy would have all this color, the different shades and values meeting and blending and flowing on the pad of paper, and I could almost begin to see it. But it wasn’t until the last few minutes that it all came together.

It was the master stroke.

She would pick up a black pastel and suddenly make a line, usually long and curving or circuitous, and I could see it! A stream, or a house, or a barn. A boat. A man. A tree.

A few more well-placed lines and the whole scene came together, and you could hear people all over the church catch their breath when they saw it. It had been there the whole time. We couldn’t see it without her master strokes at the end.

It hit me that God is like that. Laid out right in front of me, everything that is necessary. I just need to look for the master stroke, the detail that suddenly defines so clearly what God has been speaking to me in subtler ways for so long.

Or maybe I’m listening to the polished speeches and latest philosophies when I need to lift my face and look at the person God places in front of me today.

So I ask again. Where do I need to look today, God, to see your master stroke?

Out with the old (or rights, wrongs, and lefts)

02 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in faceliftbook journey, Recovery journey

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This past year I have grown by leaps and bounds as a person.

I’m going to spend a few minutes letting you in on some of my reflections of where I began 2019 and the much different place I find myself at its end.

As a homeschooling mom, I’ve always enjoyed watching my kids grow into who they are becoming. They don’t stay the same, just like I don’t, and we were happy to see another one focusing on their future just before 2019 began.

Middle Son waited after high school until he was ready to pursue a higher education, and as he showed more interest in a particular college we encouraged it, even though the costs were projected to be higher than we thought we could afford.

My husband and I were beginning to discuss the feasibility of helping this child with college expenses like we had with the older ones. We knew this was going to be a bigger investment, so we did first what we have learned by hard experience to do: we took it to God and waited for his answer.

I was very thankful I had started meeting with a Christian mentor, another woman who helped pull me back down to earth week after week. I had written down what my biggest concerns were, what I struggled with and where I thought I needed the most help.

Even in the couple of weeks between filling out the form and our first mentoring session I forgot one of my main issues. I recorded it in a journal as “not being able to give up control”. That WAS a big issue with me, but it wasn’t what I had written down. At our 3-month review my mentor reminded me what my issue REALLY was: admitting when I do something wrong.

So I was headed into the new year actively asking God to help me see when I do something wrong so that I can correct it and make amends right away. And I was also digging in and asking him to show me why I have struggled so much with this my whole life.

Just before the end of 2018 I wanted to learn how to set better goals, so I started doing Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend, and I was finding that I didn’t really have a clue about my own personal limits, much less how to set any meaningful boundaries.

I was just beginning to get a grasp on the concept that I can’t change the past and I can’t change any other person. These are obvious, and I knew them in my head, but I hadn’t taken them into my heart.

I was learning, finally, that my responsibilities, needs, condition of my heart, health of my emotions, and God-led decision-making are the things I needed to focus on.

So, how did I do over this past year?

My husband and I, after praying and both getting a clear green light, have trusted God to provide the funds needed to help our son realize his goal of going to college at a school we all love, where he feels called to be.

And God has come through exceedingly, abundantly beyond all we asked or imagined!

He received more than half his costs in scholarships, and we were able to make both his first and second semester payments in full! God is faithful, and we are in awe at how eager he is to bless us.

As I plunged into my mentoring sessions, I often talked about my safety-seeking control issues. It has plagued me all my life, this need to keep everyone around me safe. I have done many things that secluded or separated my family and me from the world around us thinking that if I had knowledge and the ability to get in between evil and my kids I could single-handedly keep everyone safe.

I’ve spent a lot of time and prayer this year wrestling this out with God, and I’ve found that every time I set myself up as being in control, I kicked God out of his rightful place. I’ve had to give up my right to control any part of my life so that I can experience truly following God. I’m glad to say I’m controlling less, though it may take the rest of my life to get where I’d like to be!

And my other issue of admitting when I’m wrong? I figured out why I have so much trouble with that. In my mind, the people who abused me as a child were deserving of punishment. They were wrong. They did bad things.

And I never wanted to be compared to them: to hurt anyone else, be responsible for causing harm to anyone.

So I could never be wrong.

I’m a work in progress on this one. Baby Girl patiently tells me when I overstep while lecturing a sales rep over the phone, or speak abruptly to a cashier at the grocery store. Out of all my children, this youngest daughter is in tune with my moods and is helping me see when I let my frustrations get in front of my better intentions.

And now I can stop and admit I blew it.

And my world doesn’t fall apart when I do.

Working my way slowly but surely through Boundaries has been a tremendous help in all of my issues this year, many more than I’m talking about here.

I began by finding that I never learned what good boundaries were as a child. God revealed to me many truths about how my parents didn’t either. So it’s like I’ve had revelation after revelation poured over me by God about what Mom and Dad’s lives were like as kids, why they struggled to set and keep boundaries with their kids, and how I’ve carried that forward into my life.

And I’ve been able to forgive.

That’s probably the most remarkable thing that has ever happened to me, this release from the need to see justice done, no more desire to have someone else suffer for what they’ve done to me or others.

As I write this I am seeing that there’s another side to the command Jesus gives us to forgive others as we have been forgiven.

I’m finally starting to FEEL forgiven. Because I’m finally able to give forgiveness to others.

Because no matter how far I’ve come in the past year, I’m not done, there’s more left to face and dig deep into and give back over to God.

And as a new year begins, I feel like God really does have a reason why he forgave me.

Because this is just the beginning.

Measuring Success

05 Thursday Dec 2019

Posted by in faceliftbook journey

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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