The Truth will make you Free (but….

it may piss you off first)

On a walk back from town this week, in the bookshelf of Darlington’s new LGBT Bookstore I saw this book.

I seriously laughed out loud.

The Evangelical Christian I used to be would have got angry at this violation of the Bible verse.

Today I thought I would do some digging, The quote could originate from a book by Jamie Buckingham, and if so, is the same Jamie Buckingham who wrote about forgiveness in the Christian context back in the 1990’s, ‘Risky living’ was one of his books. Anyway, I digress.

Because, the Truth will set you free, even if it will piss you off at first, completely encapsulates the process of healing struggle after abuse, not that different to the oppression context Gloria writes this in from a feminist perspective.

Individually though, I got faced with choices and decisions and raised awareness about my past and my behaviours that were hard to face, very hard.

But knowing the truth about myself and these things, in the present of the realisation, gave me the choice, to do something about it or deny them, run from them. Deny and Run was what I had done for the previous 40 years. That gave Lies Power.

Acceptance of the truth is what makes us free. But our..sorry my ego, my protective parts wanted to wrestle with them first, deny them any reality, deny I wasn’t ok, hide behind a mask, maybe it didnt piss me off, but parts of me were screaming inside.

Today. I see the book and smile. I see the book and realise the work. The journey ive been on and these last few weeks I seems to have a number of reasons to go back, birthdays do that dont they, as do Facebook memories, as do meeting people and being vulnerable with the story. So I see how I responded when confronted with the truth of what happened to me. So I see myself more clearly through that lens, and the behaviours I used to self soothe and survive and the consequent damage.

Today I sit and sense peace, I sense joy, i sense freedom. And in these things, to give and receive, to love, share and be loved. To be me.

The truth of me, that I am worth and deserving of love and happiness, also was something that would proverbially piss me off. But, again, it is the truth that loves is power, love from within heals, our bodies, minds and souls. It has done mine.

The Truth about Love, will set you free, but our wounded hardened selves might want to feel pissed off by it first.

Death and Resurrection, the ongoing day to day. Surrender and Acceptance.

The ‘and’, that gap between, full of tension, fear, worry and change. the Holy Saturday in the death and resurrection cycle.

On the same theme from Paulo Coelho’s new book, Maktub.

The Human Race has committed its worst crimes in the name of Truth.

Men and Women were burned.

Entire civilisations were destroyed

Those who committed sins of the flesh were cast out. Those who sought a different path were marginalised.

One of them was crucified in the name of the ‘truth’ but before he died he left a magnificent definition of Truth.

It isn’t what gives us certainties

It isn’t what gives us profound thoughts

It isn’t what makes us better than others

It isn’t what keeps us locked inside the prison of our prejudices

the Truth is what sets us free.

‘Know the truth’ he said, ‘and the Truth will make you free’

Paulo Coelho, Maktub, 2024

(just be warned, it may piss you off first)