Saying Goodbye to Secrets
When
we are ready to accept the grace God and others have for us, our secrets become
like broken kindling which help build warming fires of joy and comfort for us and
those around us. Isolation becomes joyful fellowship. It is replaced with
relational assurance and confidence. Not like the temporary, intoxicating
feelings our addictions gave us, but a deep, profound sense of goodness,
openness and oneness with God and the world He created. When we say goodbye to
our secrets, we become honest and free men. We grow to become more like Jesus.
We hide what we
know or feel ourselves to be (which we assume to be unacceptable and unlovable)
behind some kind of appearance which we hope will be more pleasing. We hide
behind pretty faces which we put on for the benefit of our public. And in time
we may even come to forget that we are hiding, and think that our assumed
pretty faces is what we really look like.
Simon Tugwell, The Beatitudes: Soundings in Christian
Traditions
For me, admitting my faults was like
a desperate grasp for life, because the life I had been building with my
secrets had been killing me. For others in Operation Integrity, it was more of
a powerful claim for personal freedom. In either case, it is a breaking away
from the secrets and addictions which deceived and buried us ever deeper into a
world of increasing self-deception and isolation. Getting real with God and
another person is an opportunity to receive supernatural help and human
assistance together. It is our personal way of reaching out, revealing
ourselves — confronting, exposing and then ultimately accepting the
faker-impostor that’s lived inside of us. Allowing others to know us thoroughly
brings us into humble alignment with God, Who will delightfully breathe life
into the true and honest person we hope to become. By getting real and being honest,
we make ourselves available to be loved.

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