lies...ALL LIES!

Remember that line from Austin Powers, the Spy who Shagged Me? Yeah, I'm glad I do. Because when I'm really upset about someone lying to me, I often think of screaming that, but just the thought of me screaming this line like the slick-haired Frau makes me pause, and it helps the anger subside.

Lies really hurt me. Lies really hurt you. Lies really, really hurt Jesus.

I have lied, do daily lie, and will probably always (but hopefully less and less) lie and hurt myself and other people. But I do not do it overtly or covertly very often.

I don't know whether to credit it to my parents or as a God-given thing, but for some reason when I tell a mis-truth, leave out a detail purposely, and whether I get caught or not, it bothers me to the core. Shaking and rattling my bones until I come clean or make it right.

Like the old Indian saying that a "conscience is a three-cornered stone that when you do something wrong spins and spins making you hurt on the inside until you make it right and make the stone stop spinning. But if you ignore and endure the spinning long enough, the cornered edges become so dull you don't even feel the spinning any more when you do wrong."

I think there must be some people out there that have ignored and endure it so long they don't have any idea that their three-cornered-rock is spinning anymore. I'm trying to teach my children to stop immediately and make things right when they do a wrong.

Not to let something you did hang over you or dis-affect you so much that you go on with life as if it never happened.

For some reason, my sense of justice is so acute it is what made me a killer HR person. I could sniff a 98% truthful answer as potently as fresh-ground coffee. I could read non-verbals like billboards, read the invisible ink of "between lines" of letters/e-mails as if they were written in Sharpie, and wasn't afraid to follow-up or ask tough questions flat out. It saved my company from any poor hires during the time that I was working for them. And the hires that I disagreed with or warned against turned out to be vindicated every time. Except for one--and I am so pleasantly surprised at that one. This justice thing, though, it's a gift and a curse. Black and white isn't a very colorful way to live.

And the same falls true in my relationships. If I ask you a question and you answer it, but then a few weeks later I overhear a slightly different variation on your first story, I know the differences. And I wonder if you ever knew me well enough to know you can't put something past me without me picking up on those slight changes.

Or if I confront you on something straight up more than once and either you give me a surfacey meant-to-be-funny answer and I bring it up again and you don't answer at all, you gave me the answer I already knew but in my heart of hearts was hoping wouldn't be true. And a little piece of me is sad.

As much as I hate all of this, I know there is a redemptive aspect to it. It's that 1/100 of what I think and feel as I reel from the stinging slaps of these injustices is what Jesus feels from me every day. And I need to feel and understand that empathetically to understand how my being faithful in the little things--no matter how tedious, painful, irksome, or sloggingly hard they are, they are necessary to restore His faith, trust, and relationship with me. That every time I am blatantly honest and apologize to someone for not answering the phone when they called because I "just didn't feel like it", Jesus is sad that I didn't feel like it, but says, "yes!", that I was honest, admitted my fault, and tried to apologize and make it right.

That when 2 days after taking a book from the library book sale without paying for it, I return and admit that I walked out of the library without paying for my purchase and am returning to pay the money I owed.

That when I make poor nutrition choices, don't exercise, spend more time nosing around in other people's business on the internet than I do with my kids, think negative thoughts about my husband's work schedule, make snooty assumptions about other moms I see at school drop-off/pick-ups, or only do a half-ass job of my Bible study lesson, I'm also a big, fat liar.

Yes, it sucks. It is painful. It is humiliating. It is frustrating. That's why Paul slashes these words across the page, "WHY do I do the things I DON'T want to do"?

Maybe, because we need to. To feel. To understand. To be reminded. To forgive ourselves and others. To better realize just how deep and wide and long and high is Jesus' forgiveness and acceptance of us. And to cut the people who do us wrong a little slack. Not to let them off the hook, but at least give them some wiggle room, another chance, and some extra time to make things right.