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By John Ashley
Our youngest son Johnny was profoundly deaf. One of the traits of most deaf people is that they are open and honest about what is on their mind. Sometimes they are brutally honest. When describing people they will normally use a physical trait to identify them. Many times I was refered to as the bald fat man. This is an honest description, just not very politically correct. We know that the truth hurts many times and to protect another person’s feelings we will not be completely honest. I must say I’m glad that there are times of restraint, especially as now I am old, fat and bald.
There are times when we are navigating difficulties in our lives and we are unwilling to be completely honest. When people ask us how we are doing, we will give them the, “I’m fine” answer without thinking because it is easy. We won’t tell people how we are really doing because, many times; we don’t want to talk about our problems or we are trying to protect other people from our personal feelings. Being honest with some people will drive them away from us; while there are others that really do want to know how we are doing.
There are to persons that we need to be totally honest with as we go through tough times. We need to be honest with ourselves first of all. Trying to stuff our feelings is counter productive. Feelings of frustration, grief, and anger have to be accepted and dealt with. I don’t mean we go and punch a wall (or someone) because of our emotions, but acknowledge how we feel and control our reactions. We cannot control our emotions, but we can control our reactions. The Bible says to be angry and sin not (Ephesians 4:26), anger is a natural reaction to some situations. We just need to control how we react to that emotion.
We also need to be honest with God. This at times can be more difficult than being honest with ourselves. After all we don’t want to accuse God of not being fair or question His love. The Bible tells us that “all things work together for good…” so whatever I am going through will work out best for me. Yet there are times when we are angry with the Lord. Times of frustrations and questions. Those are times when we must be totally honest with Him. He knows how we feel any way. We can’t hide our emotions from Him like we do with each other.
God wants us to be honest with Him. He can take the questions and the frustrations we feel. Honesty with God is always the best policy. Weep, mourn, grieve, cry out to God in our hurts and frustrations. That is when He will provide us the comfort that we need, not necessarily the answers we want.
Life can be difficult. None of us have it all figured out. We need to be honest as we navigate our trials. Be honest with ourselves and admit we have struggles we can’t handle. Be honest with God and cry out to Him for help in our trials. He will bring us comfort even when we are honestly frustrated that He hasn’t ordered our lives in the way we would have wanted.
Honesty is always the best policy. With our selves, and with the Lord.
More inspirational thoughts and stories from John Ashley can be found in the book, “Finding Grace and Peace IN SPITE OF Trials and Tragedy, the Johnny Ashley Story” and can be purchased on Amazon.com by clicking on the link below.