Coming clean and sharing with the world that you are ready to make a major change for the better, should be a good thing, right? It should feel freeing, and alleviate guilt or shame you were feeling before the confession.
I had some well-meaning and respected others advise me to pull my recent post where I shared a real and raw truth that I was moving past in my own life. I did pull it – not because I wanted to – but out of respect for them. And it felt awful. It made me feel I had done something wrong. Even worse for a writer, it has made me feel censored and watched and under the microscope for any future posts.
Just as I was majorly second-guessing and beating myself up for my perhaps overly-honest piece, I was so inspired by an amazing sermon delivered by one of our pastors yesterday. I felt like it was just for me and so timely coming right off the heels of making a big confession in my own life.
One of the things he said was that we can either “acknowledge” what we’ve done “and find mercy, or we can hide.” Another friend encouraged me with these words, “When we keep the dark things hidden, it’s only then that they have power over us.”
Some said I was “brave” to share, and maybe so, but the intention was to release it so that I could finally be free of it, and hopefully give hope to others in a similar circumstance.
Bringing things to light, is not only ok, or just for certain crazy “brave” people who have “lost their ever-loving minds to share something so personal,” it’s also biblical. Something we should do.
Essentially Better Living 