Lying to Myself

I've been told that the way I speak truth will one day get me in trouble, and yet, I am so, so good at lying to myself. 

And then, both of these things came crashing together in a way that nearly destroyed me. And I finally understood. 

I've been lying to myself for a long time. In the face of a brokenness I didn't choose, it was an easy way to make me feel more whole. In the midst of a wilderness I didn't know I entered, it was a way to help me feel found. On a shifting sand that never stopped moving, it was a way to make myself feel solid. I have created facts and theories and ideas in my head to help me understand the things I just have not been able to understand, the things I have not been able to accept...so that I can keep functioning. 

Sometimes, the weight of the world that we live in is simply too great, and it's easier to tell ourselves a few little lies just to build something to take that weight off our shoulders a little bit. 

The problem, of course, is that when we do this, the foundations on which we're setting our fragile life are not firm. 

They are prone to shaking. 

And listen, I'm not alone in this. We all do it. We are all searching for ways to be at peace with how we have to live in a broken world. In broken bodies. With broken relationships. We're all, essentially all the time, trying to make ourselves feel better about the things we don't feel good about. It's how we're wired. It's the human condition. (It's not God's design for the human condition, but it's our default back-up system, so here we are.)

But then, one day, after way too long of lying to myself (and believing me because, let's face it - I can be very convincing), a little bit of the truth leaked out. Not a big bit of it, but just a little bit of it. A couple of words strung together in a moment when I wasn't guarding them as closely. They just sort of...slipped out. 

And as soon as I heard them, it broke me. 

It broke me. I broke down crying. I couldn't stop the rest of the truth from coming spilling out all over everything. My soul felt like it ruptured, like all the weight it had been trying to hold in just came bursting forth as from a dam. I heard those words, those few little words, and I heard them in my own voice, and suddenly, all the other words that I had been afraid to speak came rushing through with them and the truth - the real truth, the truth that I've known but that I had been building a hedge against because it seemed simply too heavy - brought its full weight down to bear on me, and it broke me. 

I seemed simply to crumple into an amorphous blob of complete exhaustion, total weariness, worn-down-ness. For the first time in (in this case) years, in that moment, I accepted the reality that I had been buffering myself against. Accepted it as true. Accepted it as unwelcome, uninvited, but present nonetheless...and present in an all-consuming way. This is the life I've truly been living. 

No wonder I have been so tired. 

As soon as I felt it, as soon as I felt my soul break, my body crash, my heart sink - as soon as I felt the overwhelming grief and uncertainty and just the personal nature of it, that this is the truth about me - as soon as the tears started flowing and it didn't seem they could stop and I wasn't sure if I would ever be able to open my eyes again, let alone stand up, I heard those words in my head -  

One of these days, the truth is going to get you in trouble. 

And she was right. Here was trouble. 

In the truth about, of all things, myself.