Pants on Fire

Sometimes life is quizzical at best. At times you wonder how did you trust, how will you trust, should you trust. Recently someone important in my life, someone I’ve known for many years, someone I’ve spent so much time with the person feels as though they’re a part of my skin… well, I caught the person in a lie. Not a fib, not a stretch, not just a moment in lapse of judgement. A bit fat lie with big, fat ramifications, that affected us both personally. So when someone you trusted lies and acts on those lies… as women, what exactly do we do? As a person of faith, when you discover the breech, does one forgive? That’s the model, but is it the reality?

That is the struggle isn’t it. Do you throw away years of friendship and all the associated memories? Do you “treat her/him as you treat me” and pitch the person to the wind? Do you forgive and be mindful? Do you ignore it and just move on – with or without the glass of wine turned bitter.

When does “I’m sorry” actually mean more about you than the other person trying to make themselves feel better? How do you know? Is a liar, always forevermore, a liar? Like an adulterer, once you taste forbidden fruit, do the lies just get easier? Apparently so.

Lying seems to be in vogue lately. Our President lies, reportedly six, seven times a day. Truth is a moral value. Trust is a moral value. Or have we gotten to a place where values don’t mean anything either?

To rebuild trust or not – that is the subject at hand. Is lying ever justified – for example because as was told to me, you don’t want to hurt the person so you live with what you’ve done and hope to God you don’t get caught. But then, when caught, ultimately it hurts all the more.

Lies are like a bullet. The bullet can be extracted, but the wound is there. And then it scars over. Maybe the scar is troublesome, maybe the scar seems almost invisible. But… it’s there, isn’t it.