The WHOLE TRUTH, part 2

So.........telling the Whole Truth is confession.  There, I've said the word.  It is a powerful and frightening word.  I know because I have been frightened of it for a long time.  I knew I was playing with fire when I considered speaking the Whole Truth about myself to another, to someone I knew and who knew me.  I could almost not get the words out.......and the offense that so burdened me was also an affront to my beloved colleague who was listening to this, my first ever, personal confession of a specific sin.  This was a colleague I would sit and have coffee with in the days ahead and who might be hurt by what I was about to say.

So I get it.  It is an awkward experience.  So why do it?  Why not just rely on the Corporate Confession we share in worship most Sundays?  Why not simply talk about this issue alone, with God, as I pray?  Why take this intentional, and unnecessary step?  Because God was calling me to do just that.. to take this particular step at this time.

How can I explain that?  God laid it on my heart that I needed to walk into this area of fear in order to walk through it towards the totality of God's forgiveness for me.  I ignored God for a year.  But I had made a commitment to obey this call within a year, and in week 51 I finally arranged to meet with a colleague.

It was hard.  He was kind.  I'm glad I went ahead and did it.  Because I had done something so totally horrible that it needed to be said?  No, but because not saying it meant I was continuing to pretend that I wasn't 'that kind of person.'  It was so difficult that I was a bit put out when he said that in the end it really was a mundane sort of thing.  Mundane????  It took me 50 weeks to get to the place of even saying it aloud.  Yet together we talked about the walk of faith - that journey of trusting in God's love and being transformed by God's forgiveness.

It was one more step of understanding of what it means to be authentically me.  I believe that God has never asked me to be more than what I am - a child of God, created, broken, forgiven, redeemed, loved.  The more I grasp the power of that kind of relationship, the more free I am to simply serve others with joy.

That's why confession is good for the soul.  It sets you free.