- Not The Only One!
- 19 Jan 24
- Post #116
- ” SECRETS”
- Howdy,
- Once again welcome. We are closing out week three of the new year and I was wondering how some of you guys may be progressing with those new year resolutions?, it’s a rhetorical question, so no need to raise your hands☺️☺️. I’m not looking to put anyone to shame, but just to encourage you guys to hang in there, because the winter months can be brutal for trying to stay motivated.
- What do you guys think about when you think about secrets? I don’t know about you but the first thing that runs across my mind is the government ☺️☺️. They always seem to be conjuring up some misinformation for the American people as if we are to slow to keep up. There was recently a bag of cocaine found in the White house. Of course this prompted an investigation, but the details, the time line , and even the forensic evidence itself, all were in a constant state of Flux. Personally, I really don’t care about that, and feel as if we have so many other bigger fish to fry, especially with all that has been going on in the Middle East , of late. I’m not sure why we should be wasting man power hours and tax payers dollars , just because someone lost their party favors in the East wing somewhere.☺️☺️ I think it would be naive of us to not think that those sort of things take place. The government and not just ours, but across the globe are known for scandals that come and go. I think in our minds we think that elected officials should be just a cut above, but they are just sinful people just like all of the rest of us. They just try to keep a tighter lid on their dysfunction more than most☺️☺️.
- I’m not a conspiracy nut guy, and I really don’t give much thought about what has or has not taken place in the dessert at the famed ” Area #51″ . Perhaps you are unfamiliar with area #51, but it’s all things Extraterrestrial , UFOs , aliens and flying saucers, you name it. It’s the place that you would probably find Molder and Scully ☺️☺️, that one may take you back aways ☺️☺️. There is probably nothing more obvious about the government having secrets than the amount of redacted documents and files all over the place. I mean I believe that somethings should be kept secret such as military capabilities or insights that we may have into terrorists organizations and their evil schemes to take innocent life. However those are the very things splattered all over the internet….so much for secrets ! ☺️☺️. I don’t know why we make certain information public knowledge and other things, not so much! Maybe it’s meant to be some sort of an deterrent , to tell opposition forces not to mess with us as a powerful nation, but me as a chess player , I just sees this as You eliminating some of the guess work for them, so they can redouble their efforts In other directions.
- So, I’m not saying that all secrets are bad, I believe like most things in life, there is a time and a place for everything. Now!, when we get up close and personal, everyone on the face of the planet has secrets , well at least if you are over five years old. We just never have to teach our kids to lie, it’s just something birth in all of us. Secrets, depending on what they are and who they belong to can be quite debilitating. Secrets sometimes can be like a cancer, it can do weird things to our physic . When I say weird things, it will often eat away or gnaw at a person’s self confidence and self worth, making them feel as if they are not good enough or somehow don’t measure up. This is most often accomplished by secrets very close friend known as shame. The two of them together can land a real knockout punch. If we give it any thought at all , secrets are like an extortionist or a master blackmail artist that keeps us from being our best self. It makes us coward and we are always looking over our shoulder, being afraid that we will be exposed. Secrets only have the power that we give to them to control us. Maybe that’s why they say that confession is good for the soul ☺️☺️.
- It’s funny or odd depending on how you look at it, but what some people may feel shame over , to someone else it may not even be a hiccup. What may make it even a little bit more hilarious, they may be proud of it and wear it as some kind of a badge of honor. One of the things that pops into mind is a promiscuous person. Some people will do anything to avoid the walk of shame, others strut around proud as a peacock that they are adding notches to the bed post ☺️☺️. We all have something tucked away in some dark corner. It’s just an endless list of dysfunctional things with varied degrees and with all sorts of twist and turns. All to often we find ourselves some place that we have no idea how we got there . When , and I mean only when, because it’s not an automatic and everyone doesn’t always get there, but all to often when we get a little distance between us and our predicament, we ask ourselves what the hell was I thinking?☺️☺️. How did I get here or wind up there?. I have had my fair share of blunders and if I’m completely honest , I have made enough mistakes that led to becoming secrets for probably another half dozen people or so.☺️☺️ The kicker is some of them, I’ve done more than once, which would lead you to believe that I’m a little on the slow side and honestly the jury is still out on that one☺️☺️.
- Most of our secrets are relational in origin, and usually falls into one of two categories and they are people whom we have hurt and injured in some shape form or fashion , or people who have turned the tables on us either willingly or by happen stance. A ton of these secrets gravitate around sex or some kind of abuse. I am honestly just shocked by the number of people who have had some form of inappropriate sexual contact and or abuse. Some statistics has the numbers for females up over seventy percent, and much of this while they were a minor and with or by someone who they knew and trusted, often an authority figure, shame!, shame!, shame! The data isn’t significantly different for males, however they are less likely to talk about it , report it, and often just live in the denial and shame of it. When it comes to what people call consensual sex, it gets even crazier. I have done some study in to psychology and I think that we just keep renaming things to make them sound more sophisticated than they actually are. No knock on stay at home moms, it’s a really important job and I wish that more people could afford to do it, but do you remember when they became ” Domestic Engineers “? My point , now we have people who are supposed to be Polly amorous, but isn’t that just sophisticated swingers, but we want to dress it up some how with emotions. If you truly understood what love is, you would know that it’s not something that can be shared with multiple partners, well at least not in a true and loving relationship, but go do you and good luck with that ! ☺️☺️. Most people have had some kind of an indiscretion with someone at the wrong time and place. There is being horny, but I’ve also encountered people who have felt deprived for one reason or the other. Many years locked In a bad marriage or relationship and they are having a coming out party, as in let’s see what I’ve been missing out on☺️. No one wants to admit to being a slut puppy, but most have at some time and place, and the truly fun part is, it’s the people who You would never expect, because they are to dignified or just have their crap together, not so much☺️☺️. Most of us get an itch from time to time and we really want it scratched☺️☺️. Another piece of the puzzle is the number of women who live with the secret of having had an abortion. Talk about crippling and debilitating, horror story after horror story, and shame really does an incredible job here. This kind of reminds me of when I use to work with the local food bank giving out food. Everyone had a story and it was usually not what you would expect or thought that it might be. Yeah, the bottom line is the termination of an unwanted pregnancy, but many, many different roads as to how they got there. I just want to say that as a society we show so much more concern for when someone puts down a pet , but we have absolutely no compassion for these poor women and what they have walked through. They often live with regret beyond belief and often they find themselves as feeling it was the only option that they had at the time. I could probably write two dozen or so post about sex gone wrong, but if I did that, then some of you may get off the hook and think that your secrets aren’t important to me ☺️☺️, and I assure that is not the case. ☺️
- Moving on. Here is another doozie that maybe you can’t relate to, but when I spin it perhaps you will be able to. Many people have the secret of having been incarcerated. If they aren’t at an AA meeting where everyone is just broken and sharing that with the room, it’s not something that they are going to pull out on a first date☺️☺️. They did something misfortunate* and had to pay a debt to society. Ok, not your cup of tea, well I use to know someone who use to hire people and her immediate shame and secret was that those people were immediately disqualified and never given any consideration regardless of the crime. It was just a hard no. I believe that we need to proceed with caution, but You just can’t throw people away because of a mistake , because we all make them , and I mean like everyday. We lie to get out of a speeding ticket, unless you have a nice pair☺️☺️. We ding cars in the parking lot and not leave a note. Some cheat on their taxes. Some have had a one night stand, while being married and out of town. We gossip, back stab and connive to get what we want, anything for that corner office ☺️☺️. We cheat on test and falsify documents for various reasons. . We compete, when we should share in others happiness and success. Ok, let’s just wrap this segment up with saying that we have all lied, taken something that didn’t belong to us and probably broken all other eight commandments along the way. Yeah, you may want to stand up proudly and say not me man!!, yeah you, me and everyone else. Jesus said if you look lustfully at a member of the opposite sex then you have committed adultery with them in your heart, so just go a head and check that box☺️☺️. Ok!, I will give you that one…but murder, no way man!!! Think back to a time when you and your girlfriends crucified some one’s character, because they were different In some way different from your little click. You don’t have to go or think all the way back to high school or college, because it happens every day in lunch rooms in office buildings all across America. Maybe it’s the smelly homeless guy outside of the place you get your morning coffee, you know nothing about him, but you pass judgment on him, and that’s a dirty little secret as well.
- Ok, I’m probably not going to do this justice, but we must forge ahead. Secrets are like roaches that scurry around In the dark. When you cut the lights on they disappear, and secrets are very much the same, when exposed to the light of day , they disappear and loose the hold that they have on you. You will discover a freedom that has wanted to be present in your life for a long time. I’m not saying that it will be easy or without some pain and discomfort, but think about it as a band aide and just yank it off. What ever your secret and shame is, I can assure you that you aren’t the first person with that exact same story, or something with the storyline pretty close. It’s not always easy to put on our big boy pants and be brave, but it can be so rewarding with the freedom of not having to carry it around and the fear of being exposed. If we share our shameful secrets ” in the proper setting ” , it will encourage others to do the same and we can help one another to heal, and remember the opposite of that is to be judging others, which you have no authority to do. Secrets makes us tell lies about ourselves to others to cover some embarrassment. When we do this we misrepresented the truth of who we actually are. We care way to much about what other people think about us , when we have an ultimate judge and we should care so much more about what He thinks about us. He is the only one who can forgive us and free us from our secret shame and pain. We must remember that we are completely bare, undone and transparent to God. He knows what you think no one else knows. We can allow these things to fester in our lives and many choose that path for their entire life, talk about taking it to the grave ☺️☺️. There is an alternative, and it’s to confess it to God and to ask for healing and forgiveness. God says for all who do that, there is no condemnation . Ahh, another piece of the puzzle to go along with secrets and shame, the feeling of being condemned. I am a prime example of a person who doesn’t always take the easy path, but even I , after years of doing it my own way, came to understanding that those things will actually crush the living life out of you. We seem to always want to carry the burden alone and honestly we were never designed for that, and never God’s plan for us. We know that when we have a pebble in our shoe that it causes us discomfort, so we stop and take it out, but we will allow a secrets to continue to pierce our very souls. It just doesn’t add up or make sense.
- I need to wrap this up, but I want to address the issue of penance . We do things and believe certain things , and sometimes we believe that we can somehow fix our secrets , or make up for some past transgression by doing good things. I can assure that it doesn’t work that way. This is not one hand washes the other, or the more common belief that as long as my good out weighs my bad, then I’m some how good. What a clumsy and flimsy argument. It’s laughable, if it wasn’t so sad. First of all who would be the judge of that, and how would you keep up with that and how would you qualify it. Talking about a tangled web☺️☺️. The more moving parts, the more it falls apart. ☺️ Sometimes the things that we think are undercover and out of sight, is not always true. I mentioned how we are all undone and completely bare before God and God’s spirit lives within every born again believer and sometimes, not always, but God will give people discernment into people’s miss deeds. I wouldn’t want to live in the fear that every secret thing will become known, but God says that will happen. I don’t know when, where or how, but He said it and it will happen, maybe today or tomorrow and maybe not until judgment day, but it will become known. There is freedom in Christ from every secret that holds you captive, which you just can’t ever believe that You could ever break free from , but it’s possible. Sometimes we just have to come to the realization that God is good and big enough to handle our dysfunctions, and that will have to be enough.
- Till Next Time ✌️Peace!
- Sandy The Southerner
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