No Más: Hope Does Not Require Denial

I think one of the biggest pieces of fruit to come from my deconstruction journey has been this:

I can no longer gaslight myself just to remain in alignment with my Christian values.

And when I say that, I don’t mean that I stopped caring about truth, compassion, forgiveness, grace, redemption, or believing the best in people. I think I’m finally learning how to practice those things without lying to myself.

For a long time, I thought being a good Christian meant making the truth fit inside the framework of what I believed a good Christian was supposed to think, feel, and do.

If someone hurt me, there had to be a reason.

If someone behaved badly, I needed to understand their story.

If someone was unkind, I needed to remember that they were probably hurting too.

If someone had done something terrible, I needed to remember that people are redeemable.

And if I acknowledged too much of the ugliness of reality, I was afraid I would become hard.

So I softened.

And softened.

And softened.

Until sometimes I wasn’t being soft anymore.

I was simply lying to myself.

But here’s the thing… 

Truth is truth.

& that has become one of the most freeing realizations of my life.

I cannot force the truth to fit into a box it doesn’t fit in.

All I can do is acknowledge the truth and then choose how I want to respond to it.

Truth doesn’t need my permission to be true.

I don’t have to make someone a good person in my mind just because I believe people can become better.

I don’t have to pretend someone is safe just because I believe people are redeemable.

I don’t have to pretend something didn’t hurt just because I believe in forgiveness.

I don’t have to pretend something was okay just because I believe in grace.

And I don’t have to pretend that someone has changed just because I believe they can change.

There is a difference between potential and present reality.

Someone can be redeemable and still be behaving terribly.

Someone can have a difficult history and still be responsible for how they treat people today.

Someone can be worthy of compassion and still be someone I don’t want in my life.

Those things can all be true at the same time.

This may have been obvious for everyone else… but for me, avoiding or minimizing reality has definitely put or kept me in some unsafe or unhealthy situations way longer than I should’ve just because I thought it was the “Christian” thing to do or because I thought it was the only way to operate by “faith.” 

But faith & truth aren’t opposites nor enemies. And I think that’s where discernment comes in and says, “I would like a seat at the table.” 

The truth is simply:

This behavior may have an explanation, but it still isn’t okay.

This person may have reasons for acting this way, but those reasons don’t erase the impact of their choices.

This situation may be complicated, but I don’t have to complicate the truth.

I don’t have to hate anyone.

I don’t have to dehumanize anyone.

I don’t even have to stop having compassion.

But I also don’t have to lie and say:

“This is okay.”

When it isn’t.

That’s the part I could not do before… or at least I wouldn’t allow myself to. 

Understanding someone is not the same thing as excusing them.

Someone’s history can give me context without becoming a reason that I abandon my own reality.

That distinction has changed everything for me.

I cannot redeem someone in my mind before they have chosen to be redeemed in real life.

There was a time when I was so committed to seeing the humanity, potential, and God-given worth in people that I sometimes let those things override what their actual behavior was telling me.

I could recognize harmful behavior and immediately start building a case for why the person wasn’t really that way.

I could focus on their wounds.

I could imagine their healing.

I could hold space for their redemption.

And somewhere along the way, I realized:

I was carrying something that was never mine to carry.

A person has the agency to choose who they become.

They can choose to heal or not.

They can choose accountability or denial.

They can choose growth or stagnation.

And I don’t have to pretend they’ve chosen differently just because I hope they eventually will.

Their potential is theirs.

Their choices are theirs.

Their redemption is theirs.

I am responsible for what I choose to do with the truth that is in front of me.

As an optimist, some things will never change…

I am hopeful.

I believe people can change.

I believe life can get better.

I believe there is beauty in people.

I believe there is always more possibility than what we can see from where we currently stand.

And I’ve always wanted to protect that part of myself.

But I’ve learned something important:

Hope does not require denial.

Optimism does not require me to lie.

I can be hopeful about someone’s future without pretending their present is different from what it is.

I can believe people can change without pretending they already have.

I can believe life can get better without pretending everything is good right now.

I can see the hard thing clearly and still believe there is something beautiful on the other side of it.

In fact, I think my optimism is healthier now because it is no longer dependent on me editing reality.

I don’t have to protect my hope by closing my eyes.

I can protect my hope by trusting that I will be okay even when the truth is hard.

Truth has not made me hard.

It has made me FREE.

I don’t have to choose between truth and faith.

For me, this is where the journey has ultimately brought me.

Not away from faith.

Back to a healthier version of it.

A version where I don’t have to weaponize my beliefs against myself.

A version where being a Christian doesn’t automatically mean I have to tolerate something, give endless chances, suppress my anger, explain away what happened, or pretend I’m okay.

I can be a person of faith and tell the truth.

And I can love God without lying to myself to prove it.

No más.

I want to see clearly.

I want to tell myself the truth.

And then I want to decide who I am going to be in response to that truth.

That is where my values belong.

Not in changing reality, but in determining my response to reality.

And that distinction has given me back something I didn’t realize I was suppressing:

agency.

I don’t have to manipulate my perception of the world to preserve my goodness.

I can let the world be what it is.

I can let people be who they are.

I can let situations be what they are.

And then I get to choose.

With compassion.

With boundaries.

With discernment.

With faith.

With truth.

And, hopefully, with softness.

Because I don’t want to become hard.

I just don’t want to be blind anymore.

I can finally tell the truth without believing that telling the truth makes me less loving.

No más.