A recurring point of clarity

One recurring point of clarity has shaped my inner journey for 15 years. It remains a new clarity, a profoundly truthful one for me.

It goes back to that moment I spoke the truth about something I had done when I had the chance to walk away from the possibility of it ever being "known." 

The phone call from another state where I had lived and served as a pastor came one night.

"She says that you kissed her and that you are still pursuing her."

I hesitated, knowing the truth was different. There was a long pause.

"That's not what happened. We were intimate. We had sex. The relationship ended back there and hasn't continued."

What had happened?  A broken vow, as a husband.  A harmful act, as a father. An abused sacred trust, as a pastor.

When I spoke the truth, when I said those words, I realized, in some measure, what I had said. I had begun my part, in earnest, in my healing and recovery. But I had no idea what power I had put into motion on my behalf, and what union had been sealed between me and that power by my decision to tell the truth.

I did not see it clearly then, but I think now that it might have been something like a last chance. What would have become of me if I had hesitated or refused?

The way into healing and recovery, the path into the promised land, the land which was not like the land I had known the first 32 years of my life, the land where I had persisted in living, brought me both plains and valleys, both mountains of faith and places of profound suffering.  Suffering I would never have chosen at that time.

It brought me into an abyss, but the abyss was God. Is God. And will be God.

Soren Kierkegaard wrote this prayer: "Father in heaven! Hold not our sins against us, but hold us against our sins, so that the thought of Thee, when it awakens our soul, and each time it awakens, should not remind us of what we have committed, but of what Thou didst forgive, not of how we went astray, but of how Thou didst save us. Amen."