Courageous Truth

Once upon a time, there was a girl. The girl had a loving family who took very good care of her.
When the girl began Kindergarten, she was nervous like most Kindergarteners. She cried when she had to leave her mother, uncertain of being separated from her mom’s love. Other kids cried, too—no big deal—until one day of crying led to a week led to a month led to many more months of deep struggle in school.

There were many opinions as to what to do about the little girl’s anxiety. Most opinions centered around the notion that the girl’s loving family was being too protective. Cut the strings. Walk away. She’ll stop crying eventually. She has to grow up sometime.

One night as the little girl was taking a bath and her mom was talking to her about places where it is and is not appropriate for people to touch, the little girl casually mentioned, “No one has touched me there this year.”

This year.

But someone had touched her the previous year. A peer. A young boy. Not in her family. But someone nonetheless. And it had scared her. It had made her feel vulnerable and insecure. And it made her not certain who outside her family she could trust. It had made her feel unsafe. And it made her not want to go to school.

Thankfully, this story has a happy ending. Once the little girl told the story of what had happened to her, and once her family got her into counseling to help her work through the issues tied to the incident, she stopped crying every day when it came time to go to school. She stopped clinging to her mom’s hand and began to have the courage to walk to class alone. She began to smile more and she began to talk.

She had told the truth. And the truth had set her free.

I recently had a deep theological conversation with a friend. As we moved from one hot topic to the next, we landed on the topic of coming out. For most, the phrase “coming out” is almost exclusively tied to the process of identifying as gay/lesbian/transgendered; but for others, the phrase “coming out” has come to be associated with a process that occurs many times over the course of one’s life. The friend that I was talking to in this conversation—a woman who had been called into ministry—had had to come out of the women in ministry closet. Another friend has had to come out of the atheist closet. Another friend has had to come out of the not-called-to-be-what-her-parents-wanted-her-to-be closet. Another friend has had to come out of a political closet. Other friends have come out of other closets. And in every instance, the process has been similar: recognition of thought or feeling, exploration, questioning, doubt, struggle, fear of rejection, declaration, and acceptance (though not always in this particular order and not at all linear in sequence). [Do you know what’s interesting about this? These are also the stages of faith development.]

If I may be so bold, then I am going to suggest, dear friends, that each of us has a closet from which we need to escape. Some of us may have a whole house of them. Like the girl who began this post, your closet could be a closet of abuse and that abuse is big and real and scary and paralyzing. Or maybe your closet is financial ruin or medical insecurity or theological doubt or political anger or helpless sadness or wanting to be seen or admission of imperfection or maybe even sexual orientation. Maybe you’ve just gone into your closet or maybe you’ve been hiding your whole life. I don’t know. But what I do know is this:

When we have the courage to speak our truth in love, and when we have the courage to hear others’ truth in love, then the truth will set us free.

I’m not talking about spewing moral absolutes and fighting ‘sin’ with right and wrong. I’m talking about courageously, honestly, openly, and vulnerably risking to share parts our story—our truths—with one another in common humanity. I’m talking about fighting fear, separation, and otherness with words and dialogue—however difficult and humbling they may be. I’m talking about discussing which zones are safe and doing something proactive when we realize that safety has been breached. I’m talking about bunkering down, getting into trust-fall position, and holding one another’s pain. Because this world shouldn’t be a closet. And kids shouldn’t fear going to school. And humanity should never be us against them...