Would it shock you to know that I, who have been a Christian since age 12 and a committed Christian since age 16, spent most of that time being dishonest?
Of course, it started long before age 12 ... but after I was converted, this was one area where I didn't see the need for change, because I didn't even know I was doing it.
Two rules reigned supreme:
(1) Don't make Mom angry, and
(2) Don't ever talk about what happens inside this house.
I remember a time when I was nine or ten, innocently asking my mother in a store if we could afford this item (I even forget what it was) only to be grabbed by the arm and taken out of earshot forcibly. She got her face twelve inches from mine and hissed, "I don't want these people to know we don't have enough money to buy things!! You be careful what you say in public!!"
Oh. So I'm supposed to not tell the truth. In other words, lying is okay if it protects the family image. But don't call it lying. Cover that part up: it's not lying - it's protecting the ones you love.
This message was repeated over and over, combined with fear-mongering to keep me in line. When I let it slip to a teacher at age 15 that I'd been abused, he got a social worker involved. They sat in our kitchen and confronted my mother with me present about the situation. She asked for a moment alone with me and took me in the other room. "You know what's going to happen here don't you? They're going to come in and separate you and your brother from us and put you in foster care, somebody might even end up in jail, and none of us will ever be able to look anyone in this town in the eye again. Do you really want to be responsible for that?"
My eyes grew wide. She continued, "I want you to go back out there and tell those people you made the whole thing up. It's the only way out of what you did."
What I did?
I reluctantly did as she told me, feeling betrayed and wounded to the core, and deep inside I learned once more that the truth would always need to be sacrificed to make loved ones look good. Even if it was wrong.
So, when as a young mother I figured out that my husband had been an alcoholic for several years, I was understandably upset, but soon naturally bought into the cycle of lies that repeated more and more often to get him out of tight spots, so he didn't look bad, and so his (and possibly my?) reputation didn't suffer. "He must have had something that disagreed with him." "He won't be in to work today, he's not feeling well, probably some 24-hour thing." "He's been feeling a little weepy lately. I'm sure it will pass."
Things started to unravel in February 2006, when he ended up fighting for his life after drinking windshield washer fluid. The doctors treated it like a suicide attempt and he let them (and me) think that rather than admit the depth of his addiction. (Not until much later did I learn that he just wanted another drink and couldn't afford to go to the liquor store.) Thanks to the love of friends, I managed to make it through that ordeal. In the process, though, I was forced to tell the children that their father was an alcoholic and that he'd been one for their entire lives.
They didn't take it well. They blamed ME.
It took nearly two years of attending meetings, relapsing and ending up in the hospital on occasion for him to get the full extent of the Program - and it took me nearly as long as it took him. All the while, I tried to protect him, afraid of the negative repercussions on our reputations, on our ministries, on our children. They were already feeling the effects of a father-absent home even with him here. And, I had sucked them into the same web of deceit I'd been weaving; this time though, it backfired and they kept his drinking from me so that I wouldn't "freak out."
I was supremely unhappy by that point; I considered leaving him to save myself the anguish of seeing him in blackouts and drunken stupors. Secretly, I felt that it was my fault that he was drinking, that if I was only a better wife, a better housekeeper and a better mother, he'd not feel the need to drink. I didn't understand the true nature of addiction. And I truly believed that were I to admit all these feelings to people in the church, even to my friends, that nobody would understand and that I would be judged, criticized and condemned.
When he lost his driver's license in December 2008, something snapped inside of me. I saw this long, six-month period ahead of me in the dead of winter, and me being the only driver in the house, as the straw that broke the camel's back. I was scared. I needed help. So, I called a family counselor who understood addictions, and I talked to him. We set up regular sessions, and he began to walk me through the Twelve Steps, a blueprint for relationship with God, with self, and eventually with others.
That's when Rigorous Honesty started to make more sense to me. It wasn't just about telling the anonymous people in a group about my failings, and compartmentalizing that portion of my life without it affecting anything else. It was about being honest with ME. It was about being honest with God. And THEN it was about being honest with other people.
Over the course of the next year, my life did a complete one-eighty. The outside looked pretty much the same - but I was a different person as I reached my 1-year anniversary of "recovery" from the need to control, intimidate, and manipulate people and circumstances. I was also recovering from being a doormat - learning to set boundaries, to let people bear responsibility for their own actions instead of blaming myself for them. I was learning that it is perfectly okay - indeed, even preferable and very freeing - to live a lifestyle which demands rigorous honesty.
Best of all, when I was about 2 months into my own healing process, my husband began his own journey of freedom from alcohol, independent of me and without my help. His first Christmas sober (2009) was the capstone for him; he celebrated nine months sober that day, and realized that his hourly cravings to drink were a thing of the past, and that he was even beginning to feel content without booze. In April 2010, he and I agreed to do a ten-minute Youtube video for a production for our church: a video about the miracles we each had experienced in the area of our addictions: his to alcohol and mine to control-freaking and doormat-itis, and we found such freedom in that. We also discovered which people among our circle of friends hung around with us because of us, and which ones were only attracted to our reputations.
About six weeks ago, my husband celebrated three and a half years of sobriety.
Reminders like this necklace, hand-made by a new friend of mine, make sense now. Looking back over the last four years, with all those dark days and tough slogging of those first few months followed by a gradual emergence into light and truth ... and yes, happiness, I marvel at the contrast. I can't get over how drastically our lives have changed in such a short amount of time.
And I wouldn't trade that for anything.
Of course, it started long before age 12 ... but after I was converted, this was one area where I didn't see the need for change, because I didn't even know I was doing it.
Don't call it lying
Secrets were a huge part of my upbringing.Two rules reigned supreme:
(1) Don't make Mom angry, and
(2) Don't ever talk about what happens inside this house.
I remember a time when I was nine or ten, innocently asking my mother in a store if we could afford this item (I even forget what it was) only to be grabbed by the arm and taken out of earshot forcibly. She got her face twelve inches from mine and hissed, "I don't want these people to know we don't have enough money to buy things!! You be careful what you say in public!!"
Oh. So I'm supposed to not tell the truth. In other words, lying is okay if it protects the family image. But don't call it lying. Cover that part up: it's not lying - it's protecting the ones you love.
 |
| Image from What Career Needs to be Studied to be a Social Worker? |
My eyes grew wide. She continued, "I want you to go back out there and tell those people you made the whole thing up. It's the only way out of what you did."
What I did?
I reluctantly did as she told me, feeling betrayed and wounded to the core, and deep inside I learned once more that the truth would always need to be sacrificed to make loved ones look good. Even if it was wrong.
So, when as a young mother I figured out that my husband had been an alcoholic for several years, I was understandably upset, but soon naturally bought into the cycle of lies that repeated more and more often to get him out of tight spots, so he didn't look bad, and so his (and possibly my?) reputation didn't suffer. "He must have had something that disagreed with him." "He won't be in to work today, he's not feeling well, probably some 24-hour thing." "He's been feeling a little weepy lately. I'm sure it will pass."
Things started to unravel in February 2006, when he ended up fighting for his life after drinking windshield washer fluid. The doctors treated it like a suicide attempt and he let them (and me) think that rather than admit the depth of his addiction. (Not until much later did I learn that he just wanted another drink and couldn't afford to go to the liquor store.) Thanks to the love of friends, I managed to make it through that ordeal. In the process, though, I was forced to tell the children that their father was an alcoholic and that he'd been one for their entire lives.
They didn't take it well. They blamed ME.
The beginning of rigorous honesty
When the house of cards fell apart in April 2007, and he ended up in Detox for a week, that's when he had to admit to himself that he was an alcoholic and that maybe he needed some help. We started attending a 12-step group in May 2007, where we learned about a whole new way of living which demands "rigorous honesty." In the practical sense, that meant that if members "fell off the wagon" they would be honest enough to admit it to the group, and start off all over again from square one. Instead of the condemnation they expected, they received nothing but acceptance and encouragement to keep on keeping on, to take one day at a time and move forward.It took nearly two years of attending meetings, relapsing and ending up in the hospital on occasion for him to get the full extent of the Program - and it took me nearly as long as it took him. All the while, I tried to protect him, afraid of the negative repercussions on our reputations, on our ministries, on our children. They were already feeling the effects of a father-absent home even with him here. And, I had sucked them into the same web of deceit I'd been weaving; this time though, it backfired and they kept his drinking from me so that I wouldn't "freak out."
I was supremely unhappy by that point; I considered leaving him to save myself the anguish of seeing him in blackouts and drunken stupors. Secretly, I felt that it was my fault that he was drinking, that if I was only a better wife, a better housekeeper and a better mother, he'd not feel the need to drink. I didn't understand the true nature of addiction. And I truly believed that were I to admit all these feelings to people in the church, even to my friends, that nobody would understand and that I would be judged, criticized and condemned.
When he lost his driver's license in December 2008, something snapped inside of me. I saw this long, six-month period ahead of me in the dead of winter, and me being the only driver in the house, as the straw that broke the camel's back. I was scared. I needed help. So, I called a family counselor who understood addictions, and I talked to him. We set up regular sessions, and he began to walk me through the Twelve Steps, a blueprint for relationship with God, with self, and eventually with others.
That's when Rigorous Honesty started to make more sense to me. It wasn't just about telling the anonymous people in a group about my failings, and compartmentalizing that portion of my life without it affecting anything else. It was about being honest with ME. It was about being honest with God. And THEN it was about being honest with other people.
Over the course of the next year, my life did a complete one-eighty. The outside looked pretty much the same - but I was a different person as I reached my 1-year anniversary of "recovery" from the need to control, intimidate, and manipulate people and circumstances. I was also recovering from being a doormat - learning to set boundaries, to let people bear responsibility for their own actions instead of blaming myself for them. I was learning that it is perfectly okay - indeed, even preferable and very freeing - to live a lifestyle which demands rigorous honesty.
Best of all, when I was about 2 months into my own healing process, my husband began his own journey of freedom from alcohol, independent of me and without my help. His first Christmas sober (2009) was the capstone for him; he celebrated nine months sober that day, and realized that his hourly cravings to drink were a thing of the past, and that he was even beginning to feel content without booze. In April 2010, he and I agreed to do a ten-minute Youtube video for a production for our church: a video about the miracles we each had experienced in the area of our addictions: his to alcohol and mine to control-freaking and doormat-itis, and we found such freedom in that. We also discovered which people among our circle of friends hung around with us because of us, and which ones were only attracted to our reputations.
About six weeks ago, my husband celebrated three and a half years of sobriety.
Reminders like this necklace, hand-made by a new friend of mine, make sense now. Looking back over the last four years, with all those dark days and tough slogging of those first few months followed by a gradual emergence into light and truth ... and yes, happiness, I marvel at the contrast. I can't get over how drastically our lives have changed in such a short amount of time.
And I wouldn't trade that for anything.
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