I Suck
I suck. Yes, I have many, many things in my past (and present) that I can sit around on a wintry night like tonight and revisit as I sit comfortably in my own self-abasement. There are any of a thousand incidents to recount about which I can feel guilty all over again, just as the first time. And guilt is a powerful thing, believe you me.
We can easily become shackled to past events. Sure, they’re most often pretty big things, but we won’t let go of them and they eat us alive. The thing is, because we won’t let them go, we become bitter and more neurotic about the guilt and sorrow as time goes on. But no one can make us tell our secrets, or tell them for us. Only you can tell your secrets.
Somebody said, “We are as sick as our secrets.” I began this newsletter thingy as an attempt to be completely honest and real, because that sickness was getting to me. I had a lot of stuff welling up inside of me and I needed to get it out. I’ve come to know that secrets really do kill us, and that frustration is a type of secret. And I was frustrated, (Well, still am to a point.) and Buechner wrote, “When we tell our secrets, if only to ourselves, they lose their power.”
We begin to think that, because of our past sins, we don’t deserve anything good in life, or that we deserve all the horrible things that may be coming our way. We absolutely let the guilt of our past consume our present lives. We think that every bad thing in our lives are due to our sin, but will not recognize that the consequences of our past sin might be what are causing all of our emotional difficulties now. Such is the tragic cycle of guilt.
My life is somewhere between complete sucktitude and glorious right now, and I can’t help but comb my gray matter, trying to come up with something I haven’t repented of that may be “holding back the blessings.” It’s so easy to forget that we’re forgiven. Because forgiveness isn’t a feeling, or even a hallmark gift card, it’s given to us.
In, What’s So Amazing About Grace, Philip Yancey writes, "The church has spent so much time inculcating in us the fear of making mistakes that she has made us like ill-taught piano students; we play our songs but we never really hear them because our main concern is not to make music, but to avoid some flub that will get us in dutch ... I have now heard the strains of grace, and I grieve for my friends who have not".
Much of what we are taught centers around being better and always doing the right thing—i.e., not making God mad at us. Therefore, we don’t understand God’s forgiveness: God’s not angry at us. Over the past several years, I’ve begun to see that. With Yancey, I grieve for my friends who have not. Because with that truth comes amazing freedom and peace. So, tell your secrets, and rejoice, because they’ve lost their hold on you; their power has been sapped dry—because God doesn’t think you suck at all.
-Chad
7:01:50 PM 
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