It's funny how God absolutely knew that what I needed in my life here in DC is a small group of girls, who meet together every Tuesday, and share our lives, our food, and our love for Jesus and the gospel. Last night we spoke about lying to each other. Now I don't necessarily consider myself a major liar. I do (I feel) about the average amount of lying, and sometimes I am fully convinced that it is for the good of the cause that I lie.
But God has greatly challenged me in this over the last few days and I am sure into the remainder of the week. Now let me just preface this with the fact that it is known that I may be the worlds worst liar. So you would think that would keep me from telling lies, because I am just SO BAD at it, I am almost always caught. Or I let the lie catch up to me...
I have had a lot of meaningless friendships and relationships throughout my life, and since realizing that there is more in this world than myself, I have done the pendulum swing, sometimes placing more expectation or meaning in a friendship or a relationship than is there. I feel sometimes like I am overcompensating for the horrible and selfish ways I treated people growing up. So when faced with the fact that one of these overcompensated really important friendships are threatened, it scares me. So all I can do is lie to try and protect it.
I guess I never really thought about lying in the way that we feel is protecting others. When faced with telling the truth and hurting someone or lying to them and hurting them less, it is always what hurts them less, right? I guess I have just realized that these hurt everyone in the long run. I look at how this friendship has been disrepected, torn down, and completely degraded, just because I felt it would be better to lie to someone and pretend it was ok. Last night I realized that we are integrated in our friends lives because God doesn't want us to be hiding from them, just like he doesn't want us to hide from him.
When is it appropriate to tell the truth? The easy answer is always, although I feel that answer is a bit niave and idealist. We spoke yesterday about not saying anything, and I feel this is the way God is challenging me the most. With this particular example of a relationship, had I not said anything we wouldn't have suffered the way we did. Likewise (and here I am goign to play the blame game) if I had been offered the truth at the time, things would be much different. I guess this whole thing is just really hard for me to swallow, and after last night I am much more equipped to just nod in faith and say, yes, I am done trying to fix this lie. Because the truth has already presented itself, the lie is blown, and I know the only thing that can fix it, is not me.
Such is life... tossing out the pressure to fix things, and the idea that lies can make things easier...
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