Are You A Liar?
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My husband and I are enjoying a nice evening catching up with one of our good couple friends, when all of a sudden the conversation starts to veer towards a topic I’m very much NOT ready to talk about with our friends: how Noah and I are currently working through some differences we’ve developed in how we look at our faith and what’s important in a church. I give him the look—you know, the one your mom always gave your dad when he told a joke in front of guests he thought was funny but she thought was just a little too edgy—and expect him to move on. We are good respectable people in a great marriage who always come to easy agreement about things! What is he doing to our reputation? Much to my chagrin, he doubles down. I try a new strategy now, joining the conversation with little comments about how “it’s not a big deal” and “we’ll have it sorted out soon” and blah blah blah.
Have you ever caught yourself at a crossroads in a conversation with a good friend? The type of moment where you see very clearly there are two options: either open yourself up about something very real and very vulnerable you are struggling with, or to remain in the shallows, where everything is just fine and life is great and isn’t everything just such a blessing?! How easy it is to just tamp down the struggles, the questions, the confessions, and save them for our inner dialogue… which we know will arise again sooner or later, but better keep it inside than to out ourselves as real people who actually struggle sometimes, right? Right??
That’s where I was at in that evening couch conversation with our friends. Rather than seeing the conversation as a space to actually talk about something very real about life, and perhaps even get their wise input, I saw it as a place where a reputation must be upheld, where perceptions needed to be managed. Since when did we start seeing our friends like a target audience, for whom the narrative of our lives must be crafted and polished and served up as a neatly packaged product? Since when did we forget that friends are supposed to be the very place where we should bare our souls, confess our deepest secrets, and allow them to join us on the messy battlefield of our internal dialogues?
Here’s the deal: my husband has learned, better than I have, about the beauty of real, raw honesty with friends. Since that couch conversation, not only have we gained more insight from them about how to approach our differences, but we’ve also deepened our relationship with those friends. Funny how that works, isn’t it? How the more open we are, the more real a friendship is? While I am still learning to make decisions without worrying about others’ perceptions (it’s crazy how many reasons I’ll come up with for doing or not doing something that are entirely based on how others will perceive me, and when I can get past all of those, decisions become a lot simpler), Noah has figured out how to move past all of that and simply focus on what matters: doing what’s right, saying what’s true, and following where God is calling instead of fearing what people will think.
I’d venture to say most of us would say we’re honest people. When we measure honesty by how many outright lies we tell, we might be pretty honest. What about if we measured it by the truths we don’t tell? When your friend at the gym asks how you’re doing, and you say “great!” when actually it’s been an exhausting week? When your mom asks how things are going at work and you say “it’s been so exciting!” when actually you’re wondering if your coworkers even like you? Maybe it has been exciting, but you’re only telling half of the story. What if we sought to actually be honest when people ask us questions? Now, I’m not saying every time the cashier at the gas station asks how our day is going that we should unpack our emotional baggage while paying for our mid-afternoon Red Bull (but honestly, maybe we could be a little more open there, too); there’s still a thing called “reading the room.” Yet, sometimes we think “reading the room” means “pretend everything is fine all the time to everyone” and that’s just not it. Friends, loved ones, are people who we are close to for a reason, and often that reason is to have a place where we can be genuinely real with each other.
What lies are you telling in your life right now by simply not sharing what’s really up with you? Who in your life is asking to be there for you, but you’re not letting them close enough to know how to do that? Why are you holding on to some unrealistic narrative about yourself, locking yourself into your own little box of loneliness? In a world continually focused on crafting narratives and creating content for more followers, we can choose to dive deeper into real relationships that matter. It might be painful at first, especially if we’re not used to it, but I promise you, depth with a few friends who really see you is better than a polished reputation with thousands of viewers.
One Thing Differently:
Who is one friend you’re lying to about a struggle in your life right now? What is one way you’ll choose to bring more honesty to your next conversation?