Today is a day just like any other. I mess up. I screw my best friend over. I cheat. I lie. I put someone else down to try and build myself up. I can’t stop doing that one thing.

Yet, painfully and slowly I am learning that my sins are not an accurate indicator for who I am. I want to be known and I can’t be known unless I am fully honest. If I hide the true part of me that I am ashamed of then I know that the me that people love is not fully or truly me.

Their love is to me at least, fake. 

So I doubt their love because they don’t know the half of it.

If they did they may not truly love me. But there is only one way to really find out. By being open with who I am completely with others. It is a risk. The outcome might hurt me but without confession there will never be full acceptance of who I am from others or even by me. Those are terrible odds.

This is why we are called to confess to each other. Not because we are dodging God, hoping He’s too busy to get to our crap. But because He wants us to experience true love and life. Hiding certain parts of us prevents us from living in the beauty of that.

The freedom we seek is not so much from sin but from constantly comparing ourselves to everyone else, even when they are more than likely hiding just as much as we are.

It’s a futile exercise. This week we don’t need to run from the darkness, afraid God is not there. That’s exactly where He is. It’s where He wants to meet the world. It wasn’t enough to defeat Him and it’s not enough to defeat you.

So we confess. We open up. Safe in the knowledge that we will be accepted or heck, even just not rejected.

Today is a day just like any other.

Except it’s not.

It’s a new day.