As I’m still processing the rubble of my life, there have been two comments/questions that have popped up fairly regularly. The first is “doesn’t it feel good to be finally free of all the secrets?” My answer is “no”.
I’ve alluded to it before, but I had no intention of confessing. I was pretty content to go to my grave with my entire closet of skeletons. Here’s the thing, there are some situations where you may know they are wrong, but part of you is simply not strong enough to change on your own or, frankly, doesn’t want to give them up. In my case, my confession hand was forced.
Two days before, me and the person I was involved with had decided to “break up” (although, given our history, the emotional affair would have probably continued). Already that week, however, some pastors had confronted me without knowing, simply suspecting that something was going on with me that needed to come to light. The weekend “all hell broke loose”, she had ended up confessing to friends. Two separate prickings of the conscience, walls crumbling down, and guilt finding voice. Coincidence to some, God’s hand in action to others.
[With such a reading of events, it’d almost be tempting to be mad at God for the rubble of my life at the moment, but it’s kind of hard to be mad at God for a self-created mess. Seriously, what am I going to say? “Darn You for letting me get caught!”?]
So the short answer is heck no it doesn’t feel good. Nor does it feel especially good for the soul. It feels painful, ugly. It feels like ripping off a bandage only to find the putrefecation of flesh. Exposed woundedness isn’t easy and doesn’t feel good. That’s the point: we can’t get to that place to begin healing without first cleaning out the wound. So no, it doesn’t feel good, but I know it is good.
The second comment/question revolves around the issue of why would you confess also on your blog? Prudence dictates that the matter ought to be kept private and dealt with it in house (if for no other reason than readers will forever be reading things into my work). But this was a choice my wife and I made after talking it through. The fact of the matter is that this sin didn’t just affect my family. It impacted all of my relationships: friends, siblings, church members. We wanted a sense of public accountability. I can’t just run and hide, nor did we want things swept under a rug. That’s partly how we got here in the first place.
It’s easy to feel so caught up in your sin, so absolutely lost, that you can barely form the question “where do you begin to expose the lie?” Seriously, you’re caught up in the moment of being selfish and doing what you want; doing what feels good at the time, with no regard for long term consequences. Oh, you may think you understand the consequences, but you don’t know them. Part of you is afraid to tell, afraid of consequences, to be sure, because the repercussions can ripple far and wide (Loss of relationships. Loss of trust. Loss of respect.). But you’re also afraid of the reality of who you are, drowning in lies to the point that you don’t know where or how to turn for help.
Confession isn’t easy. You may get to that point where you’re out of excuses. You can’t blame your age, your naivete, your parents, your personal history/baggage, someone else tempting/manipulating you. You can’t play the victim. You can’t “spin” your mistakes. No, you have to start by being truly honest. You look in the mirror and realize you made a decision, your own decision. And you have to put on your big boy pants and own up to it and bear the consequences. Saying it out loud that first time, admitting to yourself what you’ve done while simultaneously trying to get your head around the enormity of it all. The truth may come out in drips and drabs. Sometimes it may even be easier to confess to a stranger or another friend rather than your spouse or whoever it is you may have directly hurt. But to hear it out loud, from your own self, makes it real. You can’t help but begin to own it.
“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32).
Just know that the truth also hurts, but the truth is do-able. We don’t like to be reminded that we’re sinners and we bristle at the thought of being told what to do. That wall of pride shoots up because we want to do what we want to do. Repentance is a call to action, to change, and repentance begins with confession. With many acts of healing, things hurt before they get better. However, only then can we be opened up to freedom from the past and be prepared to look forward to the future with hope.
***
Full Disclosure:
Secret Lives, Secret Shame
Emotional Affairs (aka No Longer “Just Friends”)
I believe the church distinguishes several parts to confession: repentance, confession, restitution, penance. (I may have forgotten or mislabelled one.) It’s a process. Bumping into someone on the sidewalk just requires an “Excuse me.” A deeper disease requires much more. Good luck.
Y’don’t have to let this comment post (I know comments are screened, and with good reason), I’m not saying it to publicly chastise you. But where you mention about people asking, “Why did you put this in your blog?” You say that you and Sally both talked about it. There is, tho, the matter that you and Sally aren’t the only players here. And while you aren’t in contact with the other person, I am wondering how that affects her. You didn’t say who it was but that tends to mean that people speculate on who it could be, and so making it this public does put female friends around you up for suspect, and judgment.
Bottom line to my thought here (and I am not judging or chastising, or at least not meaning to, believe me. I understand your reasons for deciding to make the whole thing public) is that you and Sally discussed publicising it, but you and Sally aren’t the only people involved or the only people who will be judged and/or criticised. And not being sure who it is isn’t going to stop people from judging and criticising, so you kindof put her up for judgment as much as yourself when you blogged about it.
Had you thought about that? I know at this point it’d be too late to re-think the whole thing and so perhaps it’s useless to bring it up, but it was on my mind. (and trust me, with the things I blog about and make public in regards to my own life and the lives of people connected to me, criticising you for this would make me quite the hypocrite. But I have also been learning the hard, hard lesson of what should be blogged and what should not be blogged, and I have many blunders on my own blogging record.
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Wow!!! Superpost! One of the best articles I’ve ever read on confessing. -C
it’s definitely a process. i’m still just getting my mind around the beginnings of it.
sally and i made a decision for ourselves. i’m choosing to not name names, but we are well aware of the implications. if it causes all of my relationships to be examined, so be it.
the bottom line is we think the positives outweigh the negatives.
To answer Crystal, and this is not a debate or fighting point. I am going to say my piece and be done.
We are doing what we need to do as a married couple, you know the thing that “the other woman” didn’t concider as she entered into a relationship with my husband.
Maurice and I both are an open book about life on our blogs, it’s the good, the bad and the Ugly….it’s what we, do it’s what we have always done… unfortunately this is the Ugly and it needs to come out… we use our blogs to vent and let people know what is going on in our lives… we are doing what what we need to do that is best for us. We are not blogging at anyone.
“The other woman” should have to answer and feel bad for what she did… but then again why should you understand about how much of a big deal this situation is…. plus we have been doing it in a tasteful manner…. the marriage covenant was broke, this isn’t oops a little slip up, this situation, this sin changed my whole life, it may not impact “Her” life much but my whole life changed…there is no going back to what it used to be…. that was a big lie that both people played in.
Now this part isn’t just to Crystal, things might get uncomfortalby real so you might think about quit reading our blogs, or un-friend everyone involved.
Sally Broaddus
Maurice,
No, confessing doesn’t feel good, ever. Every single time you have to bring up the old stuff, it reopens the same old wounds. What’s fesering inside bleeds out, and you’re left feeling hollow and dirty at the same time.
It’s a brave thing you did to come forward, and you have my support and respect for choosing not to sweep this under the rug and “just get over it” in private.
I just got up to speed, not having checked your blog for the past month or two, Maurice. So, to begin with: Wow.
To continue, I’ll agree with some of the other comments that people have left by noting that these posts really are an amazing display of vulnerability. I’m betting that in the annals of blogdom, Sally’s and your decision to do this ranks somewhere in a realm of extreme rarity.
To conclude, and superseding and trumping everything else, I wish you the very best as you live your way through all of this to whatever lies on the other side. And I say that to you, too, Sally, and also to your sons. Naturally, since you opened your house up to me last year, I feel a more than perfunctory sense of pain and sympathy for all of you right now. My prayers, such as they are, are with you.