#Truth

Some truths are easy and fun. We’re not dealing with those today, because those aren’t the ones that cause us trouble.

All the time, I see these posts on Facebook that tell us to Live your truth! Find your truth! Speak your truth!

It always makes me think Why not just say “Live, Find, Speak The Truth”?

Truth is Truth—verifiable, supported by facts, actual. In a sense, the quality of Truth is one size fits all.

We can be in denial, or fear, or have strong opinions about the Truth in our lives. We can wish the Truth away, act like it never happened or try to misrepresent the Truth in our words and actions.

But none of that changes the Truth. It’s still there, squatting powerfully in the corner of our hearts, driving us to reach for anger, fear, shame. Another drink. Another bowl of ice cream.

That truth can be hard. Scary hard. Especially when it tells us that we are our own worst enemy.

Or that our lives are not going to go how we thought.

Or that a dream is not going to come true.

Or that we have experienced a pain from which it will take years to recover.

None of those things create “my truth” or “your truth”. They create the Truth. And isn’t there a kind of beauty and consolation in knowing it’s a shared Truth? Because these things happen to everyone. Which is how, in God’s wisdom, these hard truths can give us new life.

A life of recovery. A life of surviving. A life of new beginnings. A life of triumph.

Truth is not darkness. Truth is coming out of the darkness into the light.

It’s not complicated and oppressive. It’s simple and straightforward.

Even hard truths can be known, tolerated, understood. The moment we accept these hard truths in our lives, we can begin to move on from them. We can heal. We seek forgiveness. We can forgive.

And I just know, because God is good, that the more we stand on Truth, the less hard Truth there will be.

So whatever we are eating, drinking, smoking, snorting, hitting, stealing and lying about, it’s not the Truth. If it’s keeping us in the darkness, it’s not the Truth. It’s shame or anger or fear of the truth. It’s what we are letting ourselves accept, or take responsibility for. It’s how we wish it were all different. But it’s not the Truth.

The Truth is somewhere else, bathed in Light. If we seek it, we’ll be in the Light too.