When I hear the words liar or cheater, I get a yucky and icky feeling in my stomach. I do not have the strength to face the realization that all of us are broken, without also knowing all people are able to choose humility and redemption. If I don't accept the possibility for change and repentance, I will drown in a spiral of shame.

It is hard to look back on my life and admit or pinpoint when I started telling lies instead of the truth. Like water is to a fish, it is something I have always lived with. That might sound strange to some, but perhaps a better way to explain would be to say that I have always lived with fear. Fear and anxiety that the truth is often an ugly thing, and I didn't see much repentance, acceptance, or forgiveness in my family of origin.

I do recall when I was in first grade, I had a really strict and harsh teacher. She clicked her heels when she walked and she was NOT warm and nurturing. I am not sure why, but one day I remember doodling on the corner of my desk with my pencil. The concept of school property and defiling it was lost on me. I am pretty sure I was just bored. However, my teacher discovered my wrongdoing and I was immediately sent to the office. She had written a note home for me to give to my parents. The note explained what I had done and I was to write out 100 times on a piece of paper "I WILL NOT WRITE ON MY DESK". It took me almost a week to tell my parents and I hated the teacher for that.

Is my sin and shame nature that inherent? Partly, I believe yes. I can be extremely stubborn and there is a really selfish part of me that wants to point the finger and avoid responsibility. I did write on the desk, after all. Justification is often a defense mechanism of choice. I remember thinking "what's the big deal? I can erase it. It is in pencil after all". But looking at it from a different view, what if every first grader in the school wrote on their desks in pencil? The truth about me is I can have an awfully defensive heart. Apparently this has been around since I was in first grade...

Why do people lie?

Lying is wrong. God says so and anyone that has been lied to can testify to how much it destroys a relationship and what we were made for. Being told I was wrong was never a good motivator for me to change. Actually, being told I was wrong only deepened my resolve to bury and hide the shame and guilt I felt for doing it in the first place. My mother was good at that. Her entire approach to sex before marriage was "don't do it... it is wrong". But that's an entire other blog for another day.

The thing I know I have needed through life is acceptance and understanding. It's crazy, because I know I don't deserve that! When I finally started to hear and trust that I wasn't alone, and that my lying came out of a place of fear, I started to understand. Fear of conflict, fear of losing people, and fear of loss of acceptance are just a few of the many reasons I chose dishonesty. Deep down there was a desire to be honest, but I never figured out how to do it - until Affair Recovery. It was just easier to lie, or so I thought. Now I can see that my lying always kept me distant and unavailable. Sure, my lying devastated my husband and almost cost us our marriage. But lying also crippled my own ability to be intimate.

I am living proof that rehabilitation can occur. Do I still want to lie? Not really. I sometimes catch myself wanting to exaggerate or maybe omit a detail from my day with my husband. If I feel that way, it is almost always coming from a place of fearing rejection. I aim to push through and share anyway. And that icky feeling in my chest? It always goes away after the truth.

Telling my husband the entire truth of my infidelity and my past was the most difficult thing I have chosen to do. Working with my counselor for the past two years, has uncovered events in my childhood that have felt like pulling a rope of thorns and needles out of my chest through my heart and throat and out into the open. But what is not spoken, cannot be healed.

If you have been lied to, you don't deserve that. On behalf of every unfaithful person out there, including me, we had no right to transfer our junk and shame onto you like that. If you are the liar, choose reform. Choose to figure out the sickness and the sin of it.

Choose honesty.
Elizabeth