Dare to Be: not knowing all the answers {Day 13}

This post is part of a 31 Day series on the topic Dare to Be and linking up with about 1500 other bloggers on hundreds of topics. Come on over to The Nester to check that out!

What do you do when you see someone in your circle of friends or family who is hurting physically, emotionally or spiritually? 

You want to help that someone who is hurting. But, there is a huge difference between helping someone and rescuing them. 

Helping them would be if you see them drowning that you throw them a lifeline. You wouldn't just stand on shore and watch them drown, would you? 

But, to rescue someone means that I try to protect them from the consequences of their own choices. That is not my job. If I try to protect someone from the consequences of their own choices I am being co-dependent with them. And, I am not helping them at all. I am probably going to make things worse for them. And, for me.

Sometimes, I admit, it is hard to know the difference.



Since I just read Brene Brown's book, Daring Greatly, several things she said come into mind.

According to Brene Brown there are three irreducible needs of human beings. Those are:

1) to be seen and loved 
2) to belong 
3) to be brave 

So, my question is, how can I, as a friend, wife, mom, daughter help those within my circle of influence to be seen and loved, to feel like they belong and to help them understand that they are brave? 

Those are things I would do if I can figure out how to do it.

If I'm being a catalyst for any of those three things, I am helping. Not rescuing. I am throwing out that lifeline that says,

"Hey, I see you. I see what you are going through and I care. 

You belong in my world. You belong here. Don't ever think that you don't belong here. Also, you belong in God's family, too. And, He loves you more than you can imagine.

I want you to know that I think you are one of the bravest people I know. I've seen what you've been through. I see what struggles you've had in the past and the struggles that you currently have and only the bravest could survive such struggle. You are brave."

This is what I want to say to those in my inner circles. Those whom God puts in my path.

I fall far short of where I want to be with this. But, this is my heart. 

This is my learning curve with God.

I want to be His mouthpiece, 

and even if it takes all of what I have within me to dare those words out of my mouth, or through a pen down onto paper, I want to use up every last ounce of energy to do it. 

And, you, my friend? I want to say it to you, too.

You are loved.
You belong.
You are brave.

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Who are you...really?

In order to write a graduate school entrance essay, I had to watch a film called Paris Je T'aime. It had several film vignettes on it. I was supposed to watch them all, pick one, and write an essay comparing the themes in the vignette to my own life story. 

She was wearing a mask.

The one that stood out to me the most was the one where the young woman was wearing a mask. She drops off her baby at a day care center. As she walks away, her baby starts to cry which prompts her to go back and sing a sweet lullaby to her child. As she sings, her face is alive and full of love. She is living "in the moment", loving and caring for her own flesh and blood. Her face radiates with the love that only a mother has for her child. 


However, a transformation happens in this woman's face as she leaves her child and travels on the subway to take care of her employer's baby. As she walks in to begin her job for the day, her employer's own baby is crying in the nursery. The look on the young woman's face is one of quiet resignation. She blankly slogs in to comfort the stranger's child. In fact, she sings the same song to this child that she sang to her own. But, as she sings, she stares out the window at the city with no emotional interaction with this stranger-child. The blankness is her mask. Only she knows what her mask is truly hiding, but it is hiding something. Probably the deep emotions at having to leave her child to go take care of another. This mask, though, prevents her from living in the moment with the child in her present care.

Are you familiar with that blank look? That "mask"? I am. I have felt it all too often, that look in my soul. The blankness that hides my true feelings and emotions. 


For me, the mask began latching itself to my face and my heart when I was very young. It masked my true self in circumstances where I felt that reflecting my true feelings and emotions would be threatening. The mask shielded my heart from not measuring up, from not feeling good enough, from not being good enough. 


The mask did protect me during the devastation of my parents' divorce, and the emotional turbulence surrounding that. However, in recent years I have realized that the facade I had been putting on to keep the peace in many situations and with certain people, had deadened a part of my soul.

I had been using the mask for far too long and it had taken its toll. Anxiety, depression and high blood pressure had become too close of companions, and I began searching for the underlying causes of these uninvited guests.

It has seemed like a glacial process, but with a trusted Christian counselor and trusted friends, I have been peeling off the mask to reveal the real me underneath it. This is showing the people around me a new self. My real self. Some like it, and some not so much. What is important for me is that I am no longer living behind a false-self mask. I have been realizing what I have been missing for all of my life....a heart fully present. I am discovering a mask-free self that I am at peace with. I am realizing that the co-dependent mask I wore for years to appease others in my world cost me my authenticity. The mask masked my own voice. It only allowed me to speak approving words to those around me, to the sheer detriment to my own heart.

Do you see the underlying truth here? 

Wear the mask----don't be true to self. LIve with discord in your soul, causing anxiety, fear and a host of other negative emotions to brew.

Peel off the mask--be true to yourself. Speak truthfully about yourself and what you need and want. Live in freedom. Live in joy and peace.

I have been meeting true freedom from mask-wearing and it is sweet! It has taken a lot of hard work, and the grace of God working in me and through me, but the real me is emerging. As I have spent time in God's presence, He has been faithful to reveal what's been behind my mask, and healing me. I am truly learning to rest in the great person he has made me to be, and detaching from my false self.