One thing I have learned: When there is something that we won’t allow ourselves to look at…something that we know is true, yet we can’t for whatever reason bring ourselves to fully acknowledge…we create a lie. And that kind of lie then goes to work creating a fortress around itself to protect itself from judgement or exposure. If it should be exposed, it might bring all things crashing down – or it might mean we will really have to change something.

And because that possibility seems way too terrifying and impossible — we allow the lie to continue. We allow it to continue, and we build an entire story around it to convince ourselves of it….over and over again – every time we ignore that slightly sick feeling in our gut, or that subtle knowing feeling that something is not quite right – we tell ourselves its ok, and this lie that we are telling ourselves to make everything ok continues on its way…a little blind dog leading us further into darkness. Whoops. We unknowingly just hired a little blind dog to lead us down the path…

Point being that this represents a lie that started out as something we didn’t want to fully look at…something we couldn’t acknowledge as being the truth because it was way too scary. And it now has its own bedroom – its own house with a yard and a pool it is now sitting by sipping margaritas. Sh*T! Now what do we do?

Well – it is now going to be quite a bit harder to look at the real truth because over time, we have created a story around this lie – told ourselves over and over again that it was all good, that the lie was the truth, and that the truth which we didn’t want to look at was the lie. Its a really, really tough situation to be in. A lot of times sh*t has to hit to the fan in order for the lie to truly be exposed and acknowledged…maybe sometimes it can be extracted and we can bring ourselves to admit the truth to ourselves of our own free will – but this scenario I think is far less common… Its hard.

But we will one day have to tell ourselves the truth, whether we like it or not. For some it may be sooner than others – I think some hang on to the lies they’ve created until the day they die. Others who are more adept at feeling and have a stronger conscience obviously will crumble sooner and change their lives completely based on the acknowledgement of whatever lie they’ve been telling themselves. I think the scariest thing is that when you lie to yourself about something for a long enough period of time – you TRULY and honestly start to believe it!! You find yourself not even thinking about it anymore as it has now simply become a wayside truth. Your brain now believes it due to the repetitious affirmation of what you have tried to tell yourself over and over and over again….that sick feeling is now replaced with complacency and maybe not even be a blip on the screen anymore…

The good news is that all lies will eventually be exposed, one way or another. Because the divine conspires for our good, all lies will eventually have light shed on them. It may take a ground-shaking, life changing event – or everything turning inside out – or maybe just a heartfelt conversation with another or with yourself with lots of tears where you really just finally acknowledge the truth. Either way it has to happen somehow… This is all so different for everybody — some people have little secrets, some people have huge lies that the entire foundation of their life is built on – whereas still others are in life situations that they have created based on little white lies they tell themselves – or really big lies they tell themselves. I think we’ve all had our own version of this somewhere along the line.

But the point is – that we don’t have to live that way. Sometimes we think we do – because the alternative is too scary. But the truth is that we don’t . And even if that means your whole life has to turn upside down in favor of the truth — the forces of good WILL conspire to lift you back up and re arrange things in the way that they should be — based on truth. A foundation of truth will last, and won’t feel yucky or weird. May we all have the courage to tell the truth to ourselves about any and all things as often as possible…and may we be given the strength to chainsaw through any lies we have told ourselves — in favor of a future that we may not necessarily be able to see — but is far more likely to be providential…and better than the one where we turned a lie into the the truth and then believed it.

It is by no means easy…but it IS the right thing…and we WILL see the fruits of our courage if we can bring ourselves to look at and tell the truth – to ourselves.

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