Broad-handed strokes of truth are somewhat easy. What do I mean?
Here’s an example of a broad-handed stroke of truth: “I was abused as a child.”
That’s difficult to say, for sure.
Small-brushed truth says, “My father deceived me for years. His penetration was not just my body, it was the penetration of my soul that lingered. Sifting the years for what was right and what was wrong, took time. Painstaking effort to find the valleys of denial that I lived in.”
My heart breaks every time I think of betraying my children. And, betray them, I did! Why? Because the devil is in the details. I knew I was abused. I told people I had been sexually abused. What I did not do, was walk away from the deception of it all. I stayed. I lived by it, in it — suffered trying to distinguish right from wrong.
A broad-handed stroke of truth is just the beginning. My children would not have gone through more abuse in my first marriage if I had learned the art of small-brushed truth. The kind of truth that sets you free.
The devil stays hidden when we don’t tell the details.
Deceivers rely on your silence. They stay hidden when your details are not disclosed. If you cannot share with a person, tell your cat — tell a favorite plant, but for the sake of all that’s good, learn to tell the details.
The details of a matter are its most problematic aspect.