HONESTY

The thing I love most about indie films is that there’s a rawness to them that welcomes ugly truths and turns them into things worthy of the screen. Those movies that end without resolution were triggering for me at first, until I was able to make the connection that life doesn’t guarantee closure. I banked those disappointments and allowed them the space to exist. Those disappointments allowed my expectations to evolve and after some time, I was able to accept honesty no matter how it presented itself.

There were some distinctions to be made, though. I wanted so much to accept the hard truths that I talked myself into accepting disrespect masked as “real”. That got old quick and I allowed more evolution and more growth.

I learned that allowing the people in my life to weaponize their truths made me want to hide from truth altogether. Truth had become painful because of their efforts to pull my emotional strings and subsequently manipulate my responses. The boundaries I learned to set stemmed from my learning and exercising the idea that anything that needs to be said can be said in love.

You see videos on social media of strangers getting belligerent with each other over everything and nothing. It’s not a new phenomena, it’s just being filmed and shared now so we see it a lot more than we did before. If this is what we can anticipate from stepping outside of our homes on any given day, going to work to potentially be berated by customers or our bosses and coworkers, why would we accept it in the parts of our lives that we get to curate.

When we create boundaries between ourselves and those who weaponize truth, we give ourselves the chance to redefine our relationship with truth. We give ourselves the space to approach honesty without fear.

We’ve coined this idea of “tough love” and I think that if tough love is the only love you know, you can still start there and aim to make it something more beautiful— but I think tough love is the result of our need for love and the presence of fear. We’re afraid of hurt so we handle it with callousness rather than an open heart.

You can be honest without the brutality. You deserve honesty without brutality. Truth can still hurt even when delivered with grace so why add the extra sting?

PRAYER

God, I avoid the truth in my life because it hurts. It hurts to think that I might not be all that I think I am. It hurts to think that all that I haven’t done is possibly my fault. I joke a lot and accept crass comments from friends because I don’t know how to let go of the pretense long enough to say that beyond the laughs, beyond the fun moments, and beyond the things that I do well, I’m broken. I keep seeing and hearing that it’s okay to not be okay but what comes after? I can’t just accept that I’m not okay. I can’t lean into that as my only truth. I don’t even know what to ask you for because I don’t know what I need for things to feel different. Help me. Just help me in whatever way you think I need it. If I’m going to accept the truths about my life, I need there to be possibilities for it to be better. I can’t just accept that it is what it is. Fix my life, please. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

JOURNAL CHALLENGE

At the heart of this weeks introspection, seek out the areas in your life where you might be more inclined to blind yourself from the truth because it hurts a little more than the others. Where do you straight up lie to yourself (even if the lie isn’t in your favor)? Do you tell yourself that you are all that you’ll ever be? Do you tell yourself that the toxic friendships and relationships are good enough because you don’t deserve any better? Do you tell yourself that you are who you are to avoid the work it takes to grow? Have you been the problem in your relationships but justify it because of your own past pain? Get honest with yourself and feel out the process. Write down the ways that you can begin changing your truth narratives.