CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL

I have a secret and I had contrived to keep my secret hidden and safe in its place yet, I discovered to do so mean that I would have to stay hidden in my place.  That place was outside of the purpose of my life and antithetical to meeting my goals and accomplishing my dreams. For over 5 years I have been willing to deny my dreams but I have decided it is too high a price to pay. I want to be a writer and published author, but to do so I would have needed to appear in my true colors. I needed to speak from my own life and my own experience, but the guilt of my past cuffed my hands and the shame of the deeds I’ve done cuffed my feet and held me static. I contented myself with living in the persona of someone else other than who I really was, but in this blog I make confession and we all know that confession is good for the soul.

  I don’t have to preempt the reader that secrets have tremendous power; countless lives have been destroyed because they were ruled by the secret or more precisely the fear of being found out or exposed. Many other lives have been neutralized as my own has from reaching  happiness, meaning, purpose, fulfillment, or  the full potential of my ability because to do so would necessarily mean using the very thing I desire to hide as an example that might help someone else overcome obstacles, hurdles, tests, and trials in their life. Having a testimony means you have survived the test, but if that wisdom, knowledge and experience remains hidden, not only is it hidden from use that could help someone else, but it lives as a cancer causing decay inside of that person.

The best that I could hope to achieve in this life is helping someone else in their life. God spared my life and performed miraculous works on my behalf, but I am saddened that I haven’t been able to be a witness and tell all that God has done for me in forgiving my wrongs and being merciful enough to allow me to keep on living.  To do that would mean that I would have had to reveal my secret and confess what I have done… I have purposely kept silent and hid Gods glory in an attempt to conceal my shame.  I would have continued hiding in the way that I have been the past five years, but this day I am accepting the freedom God has given me.  Confession is good for the soul.

As a younger man I gave my life, time, energy, and efforts to fully doing evil.  I joined a gang, I sold drugs, I used drugs, and I committed crimes against innocent persons.  I shot a sheriff’s deputy and for that I was sentenced to 12 years in prison of which I served nearly 11 years.  There I said it, I admit it, I did it.  I did it while I was lost and in error, no lies, no excuses.  I was dead wrong and fully deserving of the punishment I received.  God has already forgiven me. Still I wish I could do it all over again, but that time is past, what is present and relevant is that there are young men like myself all over the country and their lives can go either way…since I have come clean about my own life maybe the needless suffering I experienced doesn’t have to be in vain? Maybe I can offer a word of testimony…share my experience with them?   It’s just the beginning, but I already feel the weight of a thousand boulders lift off of my shoulders….I conjecture they are a thousand lies I’ve told in hiding, lifting off of my soul.  I can witness to the truth, yes; confession is good for the soul.