The Honest Truth...

The one adjective that people continue to describe me with is honest.  Sometimes they will say, "you don't sugar coat things" or "you just say how you feel don't ya", and my response has usually been a self-conscious and guilty, "yeah, sorry".  When I let myself go in a session with a client or over a cup of coffee with a friend, there comes a point in conversations where I just let go and words flow out.  Sometimes they are challenging.  Sometimes they are critical.  Sometimes they are just assumptions or guesses.  Most of the time when I am way off, people say, "no that's not it" and I think eh, ok.  But when I hit a cord, people stop.  Sometimes they cry.  Sometimes they nod.  Sometimes they light up.

When you're so honest with someone that they feel like you understand them, people melt.  They form a bond.  They feel like true friendship.  It's vulnerable and yucky in moments but its so real and authentic... and I just happen to LOVE it.  I've described them as moments where I feel like the Holy Spirit sweeps under the door and fills the room.  Usually I get warm fuzzies or heated cheeks.  Time slows.  It's magical in a way.  It's deep and raw and messy, yet it's divinely comforting.  It's exhausting as every fiber of me becomes connected with them, but that's the kind of therapy that I feel like is life changing.

I always wanted someone to just listen to me and really listen.  I don't always want some simple advice or old time metaphor for my situation.  Sometimes, like in the darkest times in my journey, I just wanted someone to sit with me and reach in the depth of my brokenness and hold it.  I wanted to hold it together so it didn't feel so alone.  And in some of my most powerful moments in my own therapy, I realized that some people really are capable of fore-fitting their own agenda and just being present with the pain.  Sometimes its those moments of reflection in that broken place where someone shines a light on the darkness and it's power just goes away.  The intensity of the pain and the depth of brokenness in my life has often been met with someone truly sitting with it with me and saying some simple profound truth about how shitty or crappy a moment is. 

I've ended friendships because of lies.  I have learned to separate my heart from hurtful people, but in the contrast, I have come to truly treasure God's gift to me of sharing truth.  Not my truth, but his, in those moments where I come to work well rest and able to just be present.  I know healing can occur for every lost soul in this space if they want it.  I know God's power works through me.  I have HOPE that each and every person in this world can sit with His truth and their own truth and recognize just what is really happening in this life.  In our life stories we are able to hide from truth, avoid truth, change truth or fight it.  We have a choice to stop the movement and stop the self-seeking temporary addictions of our heart and just feel what is in our heart. 

Today, I am aware that I want to be loved.  I want someone to see me as beautiful and perfect in his image.  I want to be enough.  I want authentic real love that is self-less at times.  I want passion and deep connection.  In our world I get so much cheap interaction and fake friendships.  I just want to have something different.  Even if that means that my circle shrinks and I insulate myself to a select short list of people, I want honesty.  I want to be real.  I want to feel real. 

I was reading 1 Peter: 2, and I got this profound sense that God has healed my heart.  God was real with me and God has been there in the darkest moments.  I had to stop living in my own brokenness and my own pattern of avoidance to see the truth.  Now that I have that truth, I can't seem to want anything else but real, true, sustainable life.  I want that in my relationships, I want that in my work, in my love.  I want my heart to be intentional and pure.  I want to let God continue to nourish me.  I want to continue to come to the fountain so I can continue to fill others up with truth...  I have spent the last few days recognizing how old patterns of living have pulled me from the truth.   The darkness of this world still has moments where it consumes me, so today my prayer is that I continue to turn to him and be filled.  Turn each day.  Be filled each day.  And to be honest with myself about the goodness he continues to give to me....

1 Peter 2 The Message (MSG)

2 ^1-3 So clean house! Make a clean sweep of malice and pretense, envy and hurtful talk. You’ve had a taste of God. Now, like infants at the breast, drink deep of God’s pure kindness. Then you’ll grow up mature and whole in God.

The Stone

^4-8 Welcome to the living Stone, the source of life. The workmen took one look and threw it out; God set it in the place of honor. Present yourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life, in which you’ll serve as holy priests offering Christ-approved lives up to God. The Scriptures provide precedent:

Look! I’m setting a stone in Zion,
    a cornerstone in the place of honor.
Whoever trusts in this stone as a foundation
    will never have cause to regret it.

To you who trust him, he’s a Stone to be proud of, but to those who refuse to trust him,

The stone the workmen threw out
    is now the chief foundation stone.

For the untrusting it’s

. . . a stone to trip over,
    a boulder blocking the way.

They trip and fall because they refuse to obey, just as predicted.

^9-10 But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.

^11-12 Friends, this world is not your home, so don’t make yourselves cozy in it. Don’t indulge your ego at the expense of your soul. Live an exemplary life among the natives so that your actions will refute their prejudices. Then they’ll be won over to God’s side and be there to join in the celebration when he arrives.

^13-17 Make the Master proud of you by being good citizens. Respect the authorities, whatever their level; they are God’s emissaries for keeping order. It is God’s will that by doing good, you might cure the ignorance of the fools who think you’re a danger to society. Exercise your freedom by serving God, not by breaking the rules. Treat everyone you meet with dignity. Love your spiritual family. Revere God. Respect the government.

The Kind of Life He Lived

^18-20 You who are servants, be good servants to your masters—not just to good masters, but also to bad ones. What counts is that you put up with it for God’s sake when you’re treated badly for no good reason. There’s no particular virtue in accepting punishment that you well deserve. But if you’re treated badly for good behavior and continue in spite of it to be a good servant, that is what counts with God.

^21-25 This is the kind of life you’ve been invited into, the kind of life Christ lived. He suffered everything that came his way so you would know that it could be done, and also know how to do it, step-by-step.

He never did one thing wrong,
Not once said anything amiss.

They called him every name in the book and he said nothing back. He suffered in silence, content to let God set things right. He used his servant body to carry our sins to the Cross so we could be rid of sin, free to live the right way. His wounds became your healing. You were lost sheep with no idea who you were or where you were going. Now you’re named and kept for good by the Shepherd of your souls.