Hanging on for Dear Life?

Sometimes we crawl out on a limb, and for the life of us, we just can’t figure out why we have found ourselves there? Most of us have had that experience. Now it’s not so much what we did to get there, it’s what we are going to do that’s important. Spending time trying to figure out how we got there can waste precious time, energy and strength. Figuring out what to do next gives us our best chance of survival. This is true whether we’re talking about a literal limb or a figurative limb.

What figurative limbs have you found yourself on? Have you told a little fib and now people are expecting you to perform based on what you said you’ve already done? Have you committed yourself to an outcome that requires more resources than you have at your disposal? Have you hidden a truth that now will come to light and undermine what you were trying to accomplish? Who has been hurt by your actions? You might think you’re the first person to have done these things, but the truth is many people do these things every day. So how do you get out of these difficult things? There’s an old saying that really applies here. If you find yourself in a deep, dark hole the first thing you need to do is stop digging!

Out on a limb; deep dark hole; these are just 2 ways that we let deceitfulness get the best of us. The only way out is to fess up. Yes, tell the truth. No matter how painful that is right now, it will save mountains of suffering later. Many people will recognize this from their own past. They will remember specific incidents when honesty would have served them better than the course they took but their immediate lack of courage resulted in unnecessary pain and suffering. The sad reality is that even if we stretch the truth a bit, we can fix it. In fact, the sooner we confess our dishonesty the better. Most people don’t want to lie but they just don’t know how to have the necessary conversation. So they obfuscate. They bend the truth, ever so slightly, and that little deviation from the true path can lead to missing the target by such a huge distance, it can be nearly impossible to get back on track.

Let me use a simple graph to show what happens when we do one little stretching of the truth. Let’s just say the dark line is the truth and the dotted line is a minor alteration of that truth. Immediately after we set off on down the path of the little white lie, we really aren’t very far away from the path of truth. But, the longer we hold onto that little white lie, the further we keep moving away from the path of truth. If we would have quickly returned to the path of truth with an immediate confession of guilt things would have been easier. But, the longer we wait, the more difficult our road back becomes. Eventually, the only way back to the line of truth is to stop moving all together, completely change direction, and follow a new and different path that leads back to the path of truth. By this time trust has been broken. Jobs may be lost. Marriages may fall apart. The hurt may run so deep, they may be very difficult to mend.

How any one person makes this corrective journey will be unique to that person. Each story I hear has one of two endings. One ending is an ending of tragedy and heartbreak. The other ending is an ending of redemption and recovery. Both endings are painful, but only redemption leads to life. I am acutely aware of many examples of both stories, and on this day, the most unusual Easter of the 70 I have experienced, it is quite fitting to ask all my readers to reflect on their own paths, as I do my own. How closely are we walking to the path of truth? How much course correction is needed? What are the consequences of not correcting our course? What are the rewards for getting back on the path.? The choice is ours! We’ve been given the power to choose. I hope we all choose wisely because, “this is the day of new beginnings!” Happy Easter everyone!