My mind is a whirlwind of thoughts, snapping them together as quickly as a Rubik’s cube champion. As I’m filling in dents and dings with plaster and painting over it isn’t making it perfect, but it’s something.
Our beliefs are no more than an amalgamation of everything around us. My beliefs are not me. I am me. My beliefs are like the little gnats and spiders that come into my house unannounced. Some I’m okay with and let stay, like the idea that everyone deserves respect. It’s more of a guiding light when I stumble upon a belief that conflicts.
I was made to believe a multitude of things. Things that are harmful, demeaning, and reduce the people around me. “I know better” is a common one for me, and although I don’t outright say it or think it, it’s embedded deep within, as though my experiences should be given more weight, more importance than yours.
I can be a bully because of it.
For this reason, “I am better” is something I need to be careful about, because once it starts spinning its web, and I walk into it, I distance myself from a person. Instead of my go-to – trying to understand them – I knock myself up pegs in status, removing myself from any further growth.
Speaking of growing, I love it. I love exposing my cobwebs and taking my loving understanding and deeply rooted presence as a brush to sweep them away.
I am not scared of my beliefs. Nor am I scared of yours.
A deeply wounded gentleman sat in my counseling office yesterday, sharing, “First is god, then is man, and then is woman.” That my gender ranked third on the list, and that his belief put me, in that moment at least, in a less than spot, is what it is. The man, in my office for relational ruptures caused by a woman, means he shows up and is allowed his hurt and the beliefs that minimize others so he can feel better.
Will I work with him until he can capture the belief and set it free in the wind? Of course. But any further consequences, penalizing, or “shame on you’s” is not what this very wounded man is in my office for.
So I love him. I respect him. I treat him like an equal. And in doing so, perhaps somewhere along the way he’ll blink himself awake, and in turn see there are people that can love him completely, even with his wounds.
On the flip side, I noticed while watching a podcast interview between a white woman and a black man, when she assumed he lived in an apartment, I too, did the same. While painting, I immediately felt guilty for the assumption, as if I’d done something wrong. But had I? All that’d happened is my assumption was wrong. Just as I spoke of loving that man, I will love this wound of mine.
Any rungs up the ladder I go, perceiving myself as superior or better is dangerous. It’s from my kingdom I hurt others, and in turn, I have far to fall.
Stay right-sized. Stay diligent in your judgments, assumptions, and “better than” moments. Check your perceptions of others, they’re likely not real. Do these things, and your fortress within will weather others’ wounds and heal your own.
As always, take care. And thank you so much for being here. Love, Jaclynn