"only if you tell the truth"

My Grannie turned one hundred this week. Last year we finished her ninety-ninth birthday on a high, wondering if we would get to celebrate her one hundreth, and today we did. My Aunt told us that she'd asked her yesterday if she could talk about her at the party, and Grannie had replied, "only if you tell the truth."

It's been a weekend of telling the truth. I've been dishonest for more of my life than I'd like to admit. I've lived constantly conforming myself to other people's expectations of me. Always making sure that I didn't cause offence, going out of my way to keep everybody happy. I've been aware of this in part, but never as fully as I was aware of it this weekend. This weekend I decided to be honest. I wrote a letter to some one I love and took it to them. We sat together and hugged and talked and cried. It was the best night I've spent in ages. I drove home lighter, elated.

The issue that was the catalyst seemed so complex, and yet as we talked it became so clear. And the truths we uncovered together have reverberated in me all day. Things in my life that were not clear are now suddenly clear.

Clarity is life-changing. It enables us to see our enemies for what they are. It dispels confusion, and it cuts fear off at the knees. Some times all it takes is for us to name something for what it is, and the fear that was enlarging and exaggerating it goes. Clarity enables us to do the naming. It shines the brightest light into the dingy corners of our hearts.

But it's the turning inwards that allows the clarity to come. And this turning inward is the gift that Lent gives us. It's the photo I would have taken in the bush on Friday, the image of the stairs descending into the darkness of the bush at dusk. We don't always like turning inwards. We fear what lurks in darkness. We don't like to acknowledge our shadows.

And yet that is the most truthful, most powerful thing we can do.