The Truth: Exposing our Lies

After spending quite some time with a downright liar, I found myself thinking, "What a gross person! I hate liars." This was followed by, "I am such an honest person," repeated to myself over and over again. However, before long God played a humbling filmreel of my past. The Best of Annie-Lies featured a biting yet enjoyable bit of memories such as the time I announced to my boyfriend's family that "Yes," the words flowed without any cognitive or moral approval, "I have met Matt Damon. He is really down-to-earth." I have never met Matt Damon.

Of course, those types of bogus lies have an endearing childlike, "I-own-a-unicorn" innocence to them. They are the social lies. Each untruth pads our bruised egos and helps us to survive when we feel inadequate. Although still a LIE, these untruths pale in comparison to the moral lies; and those whoppers haunt us. We remember times of "No, I didn't break it," perhaps moments of cheating on a test and--hopefully not--moral lies like infidelity. We crossed the line of right and wrong but cowered at the chance to realize our step.

However, self-lies stand out as the most potent category of dishonesty. We all do it. I do not know how, but we do it. Even though we subconsciously fabricate falsehoods and then regurgitate those same lies to ourselves--the creators--we sit there as credulous victims. I would argue that some of my most spiritually deadly and emotionally paralyzing maladies grow out of self-lies. I find that I silently broadcast white lies in my personal corridors, "You look great." or "I like raw carrots." or "I want to run a marathon some day." All lies. "I don't care" is my most sneeky one. This lie reverberates hundreds of times in my heart and in my mind. I really do care. Months after the fact, I admit to myself that I did care that someone said my dress was ugly or that I did not understand a scripture or that I missed the big moment. I cared. So why do I feed those lines to myself? Why are we so afraid of our true selves? (the one who hates carrots and would rather die than run 26.2 miles) I think it is because we fail to love ourselves fully enough. So instead, it seems easier to love the pretend self. Funny thing though....in the process we lose our own self-trust and self-confidence; therefore we love ourselves less after lying.

Whether pertaining to social, moral, spiritual, emotional, etc. insecurities, the act of poking out our own eyes--by lying--not only blinds our vision of self but distorts our entire view of the world. What we believe about ourselves makes up who we actually are; and that changes how we treat others. Now I grapple with the question: How do we expose ourselves for the liars that we really are? It is the total Sunday School answer: we need to recognize our mistake. Exposing ourselves to ourselves seems a bit like a grainy Judge Judy episode. But after a couple of painful rip-off-the-bandaids it starts to hit you how self-lying is really ludicrious and how liberating it is to flay those "protections."

As I have tried to start exposing myself to myself, I feel freer and more confident. The process feels like that rare time when you glance at your buck-naked imperfections in the mirror and instead of thinking, "Eww. I hate my body," you let a laugh out saying, "I love myself."