Small stuff

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.

This goes along with the Facebook quote that by listening to a child's small stuff, they are more willing to share the big stuff when it comes along.  I find that I test people out with little bits of information.  Depending on how they react to the little stuff, I decide to share more.  On the same token if some one lies to me about little stuff, I am less likely to trust them with big stuff.  I was chastised by my teenage children years ago for lying all the time.  I was devastated.  I asked them to explain.  "Well you tell people you are 'fine' when you are holding on to the shopping cart trying to keep from passing out."  From these humble beginnings I started on my quest for truth.  Like any quest, I started out small.  I started out with, "Today I am vertically challenged.  It is a challenge to stay vertical."  From this point on in my life I searched for my own truth.  The quest began so simply and over years of searching for truth my past was exposed for the grotesque lies I lived in.  For a child to be abused on a daily basis, a web of lies is created to cover this horrible truth.  When my counselor asked me about my childhood, I told him what I thought the truth was, "We went to the park and the zoo."  That was true.  Then he stopped me and confronted me with, "Tell me an average day."  I had told people this short version since high school.  I helped to protect my abusers by denying what my life really was.  I didn't just tell a lie, I lived a lie.  The hardest thing about counseling was ripping the blinders off my eyes and taking a hard look at myself.  I was sad, disgusted, frustrated, embarrassed, shamed, terrified of what lie behind me.  Leaking sewage touched every part of my life.  Clean up started immediately.  The most complex was sorting out what was done to me and what I had done.  This was complicated by things like the Stockholm Affect, PTSD, multiple personalities, and missing memories.  So many times, I wanted to give up.  So many times, I would go back to picking apart the small stuff.  I felt if I could pull apart the small stuff than the big stuff was just a bunch more small stuff stuck together.  I started to learn to recognize patterns of thinking.  I started to recognize truth where ever I found it.  At first I was constantly asking KavinCoach, "What does this mean?"  "Is this accurate?"  "Is this the truth or another version of the lies I was raised with?"  I am becoming healthier.  I am starting to form my own opinions of what is my truth.  I am accepting that for a few people I know when they are lying...their lips move.  The truth shall make you free, but first it will make you really miserable.  However, cleaning out an infected wound completely makes all the difference in the healing process.