The Truth

I am a liar.

Correction - I used to be a liar. No wait, let's distill that…I'm a recovering liar. Trying to stop lying about stuff.

Sometimes in my disease, something will happen, I'll just start lying to myself or others in a seemingly auto-pilot fashion. Because I always feel I have things to hide. But I'm trying to fight that urge. I'm trying to not be complacent about my food or my honesty.

The truth is, there was no reason to lie about this particular thing. None. I had nothing be ashamed of, but I lied anyway, because I thought that the person to whom I lied, whom we shall call Mango, would think less of me because of what I did. The truth is that there was no shame in what I did; I acted rightly. The only wrong in this situation came from choosing to tell a lie and, thereby, selling myself out.

I am reading this book called Boundaries. It's by Drs. Cloud and Townsend. Ostensibly, it's a Christian book. Yes, there are biblical references in the book. However, you can read the book as a non-Christian and still get it, because it's not pushing Christianity.

It's pushing sanity.

If you read it and you're a Christian, the biblical stuff is a bonus for you. I'm Christian, but am turned off by biblical references simply because the people who have been making them in my life are people who don't have love in their hearts when they're doing this stuff.

Anyway, through reading this book, I realized that living a life of deception is unworthy of me. I deserve better. And if I'm really going to give my life and my will over to the care of God, then I need to start living in faith by living in truth. Living in lies means that you are afraid of the truth, and you don't trust that you'll be ok if you live in the truth. I need to let go of the crutch of deception. My self-worth has to come from within, and it has to come from my own approval of what I do and how I live each day. When I can't approve of the things that I'm doing, then I can't believe in my own self's worth.

I'm not proud of having lied to Mango, but I am proud of having decided that my life is worthy of honesty. I'm proud to have decided, finally, that I don't need a fantasy to live in. My life is perfectly livable just the way it is. I don't have to change it so others can approve of it.

And now the wait begins to see if I will still have a friend when the dust settles, or whether I will not have a friend.

If Mango doesn't want to be a friend to me anymore when the dust settles, that's actually quite alright. It's alright because, if that is the case, then the friendship was obviously based on shifting sands. And it's also alright because I have other friends who don't make me feel ashamed of anything.

This lie was not of the unfaithful variety. I didn't lie about something I did to Mango. I lied about a decision that I made in my own life, not affecting Mango. However, the fact that I lied about it is weighty enough. It was a major decision for me. So that's what makes it a major lie.

And that's also what makes this a major aha moment in my life.