fearless

i appreciate honesty. not false honesty, but real, honest-to-God, uncomfortable, not the thing you want to hear honesty. lying is so disgusting to me. and we've all done our share of lying, from big lies (when i told my parents a boat had rolled back onto my little red saturn, for example) to "white lies" (when we exaggerate or embelish). when you think about honesty, the truth is, it's almost always uncomfortable. when you have to tell your parents you made a bad grade because you didn't study. when you have to tell your boss that you messed up instead of blaming a co-worker. when you have to confess your sin to your accountability partner. when you have to tell someone that you're in love with them, and you're not sure how they feel. when you have to say something that you know will hurt the person you're saying it to. the truth can make us feel good or it can make us feel awful, but it always feels better to say it.

honest relationships are important to me. i don't like feeling like i can't say something to a good friend or family member. i like to be upfront about everything. that's one thing that i really value about my relationship with lindsey: she always tells me the truth. when i need to hear something (even if it's not what i want to hear), i go to her. i know i'm not going to get a sugar-coated, make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, bull crap answer. i'm going to get an honest, well contemplated, sincere slap in the face - i mean answer. i need more of that in my life. i don't want to beat around the bush with my closest friends. we get so caught up in saying the right things at the right time that we completely forget to just be honest and genuine. sincerity is so lacking in our society today, that i think most of the time we can't decipher it from insincerity. who really knows anymore?

this one topic kind of leads me to my next thought. my friend margaret and i were having a real honest, heart-to-heart conversation late friday night on my front porch. we were talking about loving and losing and heartbreak and heartache and all the inbetween of relationships. she and i both have had many heartbreaks, and we were talking about how we find ourselves so closed off to the possibility of a relationship. i've talked about this before. we talked about how we completely shut down and say we don't want to bother with it, but is that truth? no! of course i still want to fall in love and get married. so the truth is, i absolutely want to bother with it! margaret made a great point: guarding your heart is not the same thing as shutting yourself off from possibilities. we can't shut down and say we're not interested, because the underlying truth in that statement is this: i'm saying that i'm not interested and that i don't want to mess with relationships and love, because i don't want to get hurt or be rejected or be vulnerable. that's the real honest-to-God answer. i say i don't want to date, because i'm sick of first dates never leading to anything but a "nice to meet you, thanks for dinner, good night." i'm sick of the disappointment, the let down, the frustration, the analyzing every word and action. i told angela about this today, and i said, "i don't want to do this anymore, because i don't want it to keep ending like this." and she said, "it won't always end like this." the honest truth: i'm struggling with being single. i'm not desperate. i'm not unhappy. but i'm tired of every date and every possibility and every relationship ending the same way. that's the truth. but on the flip side, the truth is that every frog gets me that much closer to the prince. every day without him makes me another day closer to him. and so even when i say (or scream) that i give up, the truth is, i can't give up. i'm still holding on. i've still got faith, because every day - any day - could be the day.

"the truth will set you free."

john 8:32