Notes From a Recovering “Right-aholic”

Notes From a Recovering “Right-aholic” ELISABETH HASSELBECK “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Romans 12:18 (NIV) Over the course of a 15-year career in broadcasting, my muscles for preparing a perspective on a topic refined my arguing skills and needed a lot of workouts to maintain the 10-year debate I found myself in at The View. I could call myself, and have called myself, a recovering “right-aholic.” I needed and loved and thrived on being right for a very long time. In my personal life, training to be “right” started early — right answers on tests, right study habits, right decisions after school, the right course selection to get into the right college to follow the right path. I even played right field. That’s how much I wanted to be right! Professionally, I spent a decade and a half needing to be right Monday through Friday each week on live television. Being right was what I was trained to do and what I needed to do. But all that emphasis on being right came with a cost, because people have value. We can be very right about an issue and very wrong with a person. When we hold on to being right, it looks like two cars on a single-lane road, face-to-face and in gridlock. Whoopi Goldberg and I started this way at The View. In fact, I’m pretty sure that our first few words to each other only had four letters in them. But at some point, we decided that being right with each other would require being a little more wrong — wrong enough to give someone the right-of-way. When we did that and backed up the cars, we experienced the joy and freedom of not having to think the same way while still being able to love the same way. And we decided that being right about an issue was less important than being right with one another, because you can be very right and yet very alone. I’m pretty sure we aren’t going to enter into the gates of heaven with God saying, “Child, I am so proud of you. Look at how right you were.” I am more confident that God desires we experience the joy of being right with one another, not more right than another. I am confident He asks that where we stand on issues becomes much less important and sacred than the God we stand under together. God desires for us to make peace with those around us. As we see in today’s key verse, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18). Think about that person you are “less right with” because you’ve been so right about a position, an issue or something else that matters a lot less than another human being. Being right does not guarantee we feel joy. I think we can all be honest and say we wish we had been a little more wrong — wrong enough to make things right with a sister, a brother, a friend, a husband, a daughter or a son. What would it look like to be less right about whatever the issue was and be more right with the other person? Find a teacher who points you to being right with people, then implement a strategy for doing so. Bob Goff has taught me a lot about this just by how he lives. Jesus Christ is the best Teacher of being right with others! Over the past decade, I’ve learned that working hard at making a point is way less fulfilling than pointing to the Maker. Heavenly Father, make me wrong enough so that I can be right with others. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.