In all honesty

For the past few months I have been working through a pretty big issue with my son. Unfortunately, our issue was further exacerbated by the fact that he was not being honest with me - and I knew it. So for the past 6 weeks I have been giving him opportunities to come clean, secretly begging him to tell me the truth I knew was out there just waiting to come forward. You see, I knew we could not really resolve his problem until we got all the way down to the truth and started to build from there.

My son's problem was that he didn't want to admit a mistake - so in his efforts to hide his error, he actually further complicated the whole situation and the resolution will be much more difficult and time consuming. IF HE HAD ONLY ADMITTED IT WHEN IT HAPPENED INSTEAD OF TRYING TO HIDE IT FROM ME!

What could he have been fearing? Why was he afraid to let me know? How could he have possibly thought that lying about his situation and delaying his "confession" to me could have served any good purpose?

But isn't that what we do ourselves with our own relationship with God? Don't we delay admitting to him with full disclosure what we have done and why we have done it? Isn't it easier to either pretend we have done nothing wrong - or worse yet, try to fix it ourselves? And there sits God, just waiting for us to come to our senses. And when we are finally at our last resort, when we understand we can't hide anymore, when we finally realize our problem is much bigger than ourselves, when we ultimately turn to God and admit what we have done - He is right there for us! It is not that we won't have to bear the consequences of our actions, but at least that anxiety of being revealed is no longer separating us from Him. We can finally stop hiding and get to work - moving forward with Him, not by ourselves.

Tonight, after my little tirade was over and we sat down and had honest discussion, my son and I were once again reconciled in our relationship. It is my hope that his lesson learned is that my love is so unwavering, that even when the difficult and painful truth must be dealt with - the underpinning of love will transcend all, and that maybe the next time he will feel comfortable enough to admit his mistakes before they become tragic errors.

I imagine God has the same desire for me.