Climbing Out of Holes
Repentance isn’t difficult to understand. It is almost impossible to undertake.
Change is difficult and changing in front of others, whether it’s clothes or behavior, is embarrassing.
It reveals weakness and acknowledges having made a mistake.
It magnifies flaws that go against our slick attempts to convince the world we are through and through amazIng.
And what can be even worse is to allow those we love to publicly climb out of their own embarrassing holes. From early in life many of us were taught it was important to keep embarrassing family secrets hidden from public view.
There comes a point, however, when we need to come to see that we may be interfering with another’s necessary path to recovery.
Owning our own character failures and detaching from the failures of others requires the proper use of personal boundaries. It is breaking codependency and learning the importance of being honest, with ourselves, God, and others. Usually it happens in that order. We wake up and then cry out and finally own up.
The good news is we don’t have to live in holes, even the ones we may have dug for ourselves.
For though I [Paul] caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it; though I did regret it—for I see that that letter caused you sorrow, though only for a while— I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.
2 Corinthians 7:8-10 (NASB)
