Denial

That lump isn’t cancer.  He doesn’t hit me that hard.  I’m not that fat.  My credit card debt isn’t that serious.  I can quit (fill in the blank–drinking, using drugs, gambling)  any time I want to.  It’s my wife who has the problem, it’s not me.

Every day the people we pass in the street, the person who calls on the phone, perhaps the person who looks back at us in the mirror is lying to himself or herself.

If we admitted there was a problem, then we’d have to do something about it.  We might have to admit we were wrong.  We might have to face things about ourselves we are too scared to face.  So we deny.

First we deny there is a problem.  Then we do whatever we can to discredit the person or persons who disagree with us.  We call our confronters crazy or stupid.  We think, well, my little flaw might be out of control in some people but I have it completely under control. And yes, we isolate ourselves.  We may have one or two weak friends who gloss over our “little flaw,” probably because that “little flaw” resides in them also.

But then life tries to shake us out of denial.  The whispers life sends turn into shouts, then screams.  It could be an arrest, a death or a divorce or something else.

If we are smart, we will step out of denial, but it takes a lot of courage and it means we have to do something.  We have to go to the doctor and get the lump biopsied. We have to check ourselves into rehab.  We have to admit we need God to help us out of the mess we made of our life.

Long ago I heard a story of how people would catch monkeys.  The humans would put something shiny in a box with a hole just big enough for the monkeys to get their hands in.  But if the monkeys continued to hold the object that was still in the box in their fists, they could not release themselves from the box.  The captors would get closer and closer but the monkeys would not release the object, slip their hands out of the hole and be freed. Soon the monkeys were no longer free.

Humans who are in denial hold on to their denial so tightly they soon find themselves also taken captive.

It’s time to confess your shortcomings to God and others.  It’s time to let that denial go.