This is the first clip in a two-part series about authenticity. Also check out the 2nd clip “In the Middle of Change“.
Have you ever “anted up” in a relationship before? How did it affect the relationship?
Do you agree with Elaine when she says “telling the truth is the place to start if you want to be bonded together and create a real community of believers.”?
Updating…
Elaine Hamilton is a Marriage and Family Therapist in San Diego, CA and the author of Church on the Couch.
i agree 100%! i started, a similar journey. 8 years ago, and it has lead to freedom in my life. but more than that, it has lead me to the most fantastic, intimate relationships i’ve ever experienced. when to people share the ugly, messy truth, with each other, there is a bound that can not be explained, to those who have never experienced it. thank you for starting that group, because my life was saved as a byproduct of that group.
should have proof read this comment. lol i meant two and bond not bound.
That sounds beautiful, inspiring and needed. Hard to live out when you move every year or 2. I don’t think it has to be done in person though and one can find real friends to share the truth with from miles away. I wonder do men find this odd or more of a challenge than women do? This sounds doable to me but I wonder does it scare a lot of men? Is that a trait of American men or just men in general or is this not the case at all? Just wondering out loud.
On the other side of the world to American men, I can confirm it’s the same here – men are not comfortable showing the ‘weakness’ that truth can expose. I’d never tell my unabridged life story.
Part of the problem, I think, is the legacy of the Church’s poor handling of redemption, where truth has a closer relationship with guilt and control than release and freedom.
Lovely =). My experience was that I was unable to be fully loving, gracious, curious, and non-judgmental toward myself until this has first been modeled toward me from others.
The reason that I was afraid, for the longest time, to share all of my experience with others in my circle of friends, which were all inside the church, was that the church leadership was openly judgmental toward some groups of people. This led me and others to believe that we would certainly be judged if we shared our real experiences.
melissa, i think it is harder for men, but it is certainly doable. i hang out with guys who have learned to life in the truth. it was harder for me to bare all the ugliness of my life and soul with women, but that is where the greater healing has happened. steve & benjamin, i agree the church has not been a good model for truth and redemption, because there is condemnation when we struggle with issues. i don’t associate with that kind of church, for that very reason.
On point.
It is sad that we convince ourselves to hide.
To bear fruit we have to KEEP with repentance.
If we don’t open up, we don’t grow up.
I love the idea and believe whole-heartedly in the truth of it. But what I have experienced in the last ten years is what keeps me away from this in the “church” realm. I have found a lot of people in the church want to combat real, messy, heavy truth with simplistic and cliched answers. Its not that I don’t believe God can heal these deep wounds. Its just that these responses often come across as not really caring. They come across like the person can’t relate or won’t relate, because, (and this is just how it feels to me) somebody who believes in God shouldn’t struggle with that type of thing or should have already been healed of that wound. I believe in the awesome power of God but I don’t think its as easy as waving a magic God-wand and everything is fine. I want to be open and honest and say what’s really on my heart without that churchy judgment, without that “better than thou” pity response, without that half hearted “it’ll be ok” response.
I freakin’ LOVE this. I’ve recently (about 4 months ago) started going to a Celebrate Recovery group at my local church to talk about anger problems in my marriage and life. I was PETRIFIED to share this aspect of my life with other people from my church, but I felt like I had run out of options. My 10 year marriage was really sucking and I was getting desperate, so I decided to just “man up” and go for it. I’ve found that I ebb and flow with divulging the truth about my life (and current happenings). But, when I can muster up the courage to be genuine and “dead honest” about what’s really going on in my life, it changes me deeply. I only wish that I could experience this type of group during my normal Sunday morning worship. I am really struggling with going to church every Sunday, staring at the back of people’s heads and being generally fake.
Jason