Why are books like Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton so popular? It’s a memoir, but it’s more a confession, an exercise in truth-telling. Glennon tells her story warts and all.
We often associate confession with judgement, shame, and fear, but if we look at the Prodigal Son, his confession is a truth-telling exercise. He spent all his father’s money on women and wine and wasted his life, but he came back and told the truth.
It takes guts to come back and tell the truth. It takes guts to face the consequences. It takes guts to confess.
Sometimes our stories are carefully curated to create a Facebook or Instagam highlight reel in order to hide the truth.
How hard is it when you have secrets that may change the way people see you? Regard you? Treat you? Those are the secrets we don’t post on social media.
We hold those secrets close. We hold those secrets tight. We hold those secrets in.
The truth is said to set you free, but often the truth also serves up consequences and a series of events that we wished we’d never initiated.
What if you had to confess you were having an affair?
That you were stealing?
That you’d been lying ?
That you’d been pretending you’re okay?
That you are gay?
In the lead up to the release of my new novel, Amazing Grace, some friends have been brave enough to share their confessions. Confessions of domestic violence, abuse, an eating disorder, and miscarriage are often stories of shame, fear, and secrets. We often feel like we are the only ones who silently suffer, the only ones who have shameful secrets, the only ones who shudder to speak.
These confessions tell of grace. Grace isn’t always easy to give and it’s not always easy to receive. Grace is free, but it’s not easy.
Grace is not a free ticket to get you out of consequences, but it is a free ticket out of shame, unforgiveness, self-hatred and fear of being found out. Grace comes in the truth telling, in acceptance, the facing of the consequences, in love, and forgiveness.
How many times, outside of the Prodigal Son story, have you seen a party thrown for a person who came back, told the truth and faced the consequences? How many times have you seen people judged, ignored, disrespected or shunned when they told the truth?
As you read the confessions over the next two weeks, consider how each person suffered in the not telling. Consider how confessing, telling the truth, helped them to a new place of confidence, trust, faith, and understanding. Consider how you view others’ confessions and how to offer compassion.
Confession and compassion are good for soul.
Love frees us to embrace all of our history, the history in which all things are being made new. Rob Bell
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