Honesty

Last Saturday, I had the honor of sitting with my sweet friend, Kristin, at a wrestling tournament. I needed her terribly badly that day. As we talked, she introduced me to a website and a book, "Say What You Need to Say," by Holly Bowerman. I STRONGLY recommend this book. If you'd like to borrow my copy, let me know! I'll send it right over! It's worth the read, and worth the lessons that can be learned from it.

Today, I want to blog about what she said about honesty.

"There is no truth I can't handle, but dishonesty destroys and hurts like nothing else I have ever experienced."

There have been so many times in my life when I felt like I was living a lie. Some of those have been because of my own choices and others were because of others' choices. My first committed relationship - after 10 months, I learned that this person was not at all the person he had told everyone he was. Awesome. So, in my mind, my life was a complete lie for 10 months. I didn't know how to recover from that. My first marriage, I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. I had marks on my body long before I said, "I do." I just didn't think I deserved any better. (I hate the word deserved) I defined myself as someone else's used garbage. I had to take what I could get. The marriage was exactly what I knew it would be, except that my children were being hurt too. My second marriage, I fully believed I was making the right decision. I went through months of therapy and I was "good." Hardly. I had done everything to hurt myself. I had given my body to anyone who wanted it. I drank away my fears, anger, sadness, depression, feelings of failure. I was living my own lie. So, when I got married and later realized that he had been sleeping with my "best friend" for the entire relationship, I once again realized that the entire time frame was a lie. He wasn't at all what he was supposed to be. I was living a life that I thought was one thing, yet it was none of that. So, why not get married a third time?!?! There have been huge hurdles in my current marriage, some that have seemed insurmountable and like there was no way to survive. We are still working at it, but honesty has to be paramount. I finally believe that I CAN handle the truth. I WANT the truth. Tell me exactly what is happening so that I am not living a lie. Nothing destroys or hurts like lies. I can handle it. Give me the option of making decisions based on facts. Let me make educated decisions for myself and my children.

I am stronger than you think I am.