blogspot confessional

Not long after I came to the Rock, someone asked me who Steffi was. Steffi is the girl who watches John and Joe in the early service. I’ve known her since she was about 8, I guess. I jokingly said she was my oldest child. The person took me literally, and I could see them trying to do the math—36 year old pastor, 20 year old girl… We have to keep up the front, otherwise I lose my family discount at Gold Star, where Steffi works… Don’t come between me and my Gold Star…

Anyway, I was in Gold Star, grabbing lunch and working on my sermon. It’s a good, quiet place. Steffi had this book she let me look at, some compendium of postcards people send anonymously and confess secrets, get it off their chest, whatever. Fascinating, moving, funny, tragic.

But it opened a wound-- an odd one, I suppose. That is, I didn’t keep any secrets from Melissa. Like I’ve said, we had an honest relationship. It started because there were a bunch of us who hung out together. I’m pretty transparent most times, and get me around some people I am comfortable with, and there’s no telling what I might say. Well, I never thought Melissa and I would end up going out, getting married, so I said things you’d never say to/around someone you might date. Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound. It was a blessing to be able to be honest. Otherwise, you live in a shadowland. Afraid, unable to be yourself. Honestly, I’m surprised she loved me. She knew what she was getting into, that’s all I can say.

How many people can you be honest with? There’s not a lot of value, it doesn’t seem to me, if you’re a hidden figure from the person you should be closest to. What if you can’t speak about crises of conscience, own your hypocrisy, express how you’ve been degraded, or that you have degraded others in truly wretched ways, what if you can’t know and be known? If we’re not careful, and sometimes if we are, God becomes abstract. An idea. You need someone who can be incarnational, to remind you of God’s presence.

Most people see me as a well-spoken, engaging person; a loyal friend; a funny guy; a friend to the broken-hearted; compassionate to the poor. That’s all there, I like to think. But then there’s a dark side; really, a heap of dark things all mashed up. I say this freely because I know you are the same, so it’s not like I’m the freak, here. Ok, I am, but you know what I mean. I was simply able to let it out, she loved me anyway, and all that crap lost its hold and power over me. I had let it go to God, but there was that part of me that said, “well, He’s God, He has to love me.” (I have come to realize that not everyone feels this way. I wish you did. It changes everything if you know beyond needing to know how you know that God loves you) But people are not as loving and forgiving as God, so I wondered. But I don’t wonder anymore. And I am never going back to the shadowlands.