Honesty

Honest self-evaluation is a grueling experience, but no personal growth comes apart from authentic introspection and courageous confession. Self-deception is the most ludicrous state of man. It's not that it's a strain for me to be hard on myself, but that I am selective about what I choose to regret. For that reason, and that reason alone, I am to blame for my own state of regression. Until I own up to every personal fault, failure, shortcoming, and self-induced sin without sloughing the blame onto someone else's shoulders, I remain confined to performing in a narrow theatre in which I am both actor and audience. 

If the Curtain Fell

Let grace get a good look at you. The more honest you are with yourself about yourself, the more profoundly God is able to knead forgiveness into the essence of your life. Why is it that we tend toward playing Russian Roulette with authenticity? Only one moment in six am I entirely present as myself. The rest of the time I conjure a hologram of what I want others to think of me. What would happen if, instead, I allowed others to peak beneath the veneer? What would change if the curtain fell and I stood exposed, naked as to thoughts and feelings and hopes and hurts and insecurities and needs?  I imagine that many of my relationships would reboot with substance and depth and transformation. Perhaps I'm only as good as my next honest question and as real as my next sincere confession. Buechner speaks of this bottom-line understanding and presenting of ourselves: "There is no book to look up the answer in. There is only your own heart and whatever by God's grace it has picked up in the way of insight, honesty, courage, humility, and, maybe above everything else, compassion."(Whistling in the Dark)