Can we take a moment to address the elephant in the room? Can we talk about living in denial and how it has some of us disillusioned to not accepting our truth. We all know that one person who denies having an anger issue, everyone confirms that the person has an anger issue, except the person with the anger issues. Another way of looking at denial is when everyone at the restaurant tells you that you got food between your teeth and you choose to deny it until you go to the bathroom and take a look in the mirror.

Denial by definition is the action of declaring something to be untrue. Before you come at me with your theologies and defense tatics, I want to let you know that denial has a two way approach. First, you can deny bad experiences that were spoken in falsehood about you and defend yourself because those bad experiences are indeed untrue. Secondly, you can also deny bad experiences that actually happened and you were part of it either voluntary or involuntary and defend yourself because those bad experiences were/are your reality. Lets get the cat out of the bag, I will spend my time talking about the second approach of denial because it has had many of us fearful to face our truth.

I am not a psychologist so I don’t have big psychological terminology that will convince you that you are living in denial when you should be facing your truth. However, what I do have is experience, I have had a couple of bad experiences that happened in my own life that were true, but it was hard for me to face my truth. I tried to sweep it under the rag like most of us do and pretend that I have it all together. I can go all day telling you about my bad events that I chose to deny, but there is no experience in my life that is compared to the lose of my mother. My mother passed away in 2012, and let me tell you that her death changed almost everything that I thought my life should have been. I was in total denial about her death for a very long time. I could not accept the reality I was facing, but I was good at putting up a brave face because everyone expected me to be strong. I often could not face the fact that I was orphaned of both my parents and being an only child didn’t help me much. If you know a thing or two about only children you will understand what I mean. My reality was that my mother was no more and that I had to figure out life without her, move to a different country without her, graduate college without her, get married without her, have children without her and that was not easy to accept. So I fought with my thoughts at night and wished everything that just happened was just a dream, but it was reality that I could not face at the time. So your question would be, how did you accept this truth and face it? I had a crazy man I call my brother William that made me speak my truth and call me out on my denial. This was not an easy process because I was in full denial mode. Despite of the constant defense of my actions, I got to a place that led me to accepting my truth. All truth, not just my mother’s death, but a whole lot of my other mistakes and regrets. I can’t stress enough the importance of having truth tellers in your life, people that will tell you the truth no matter how it hurts because they want to see you walk free (read my blog on freedom).

I can tell you that ever since I started to accept my truth, it is so much easier to live my life without denying my reality. I don’t know what you are struggling to accept right now and it is your reality, all I can tell you is that the quicker you face it, the quicker your peace of mind. Do not feel like you have it bad because if we look back to the bible, Peter denied Jesus, not once, but three times. Peter denied ever being with Jesus (the truth) because of fear of being killed too. We too have denied our truth because we fear being judged, judgment feels like death because people are constantly judging others like it is a competition. Truth is that we should be talking about what we are struggling to face because the more we talk about it, the freer we get from it and hence we start to accept our reality.

It all starts in the mind, our thoughts can ran our lives for us if we do not take charge of them. It is very easy to make an illusion that fools people into thinking your life is sunshine and rainbows, meanwhile you still carry around pain that happened to you as a little girl or boy. You are still pondering on the mistakes you made as a teenager and beating yourself about it. You lose sleep over regrets that happened when your not mature enough to tell who was genuine in your life. I know this because I have been there, but I am not allowing myself to stay in denial! I am accepting my truth and learning my lessons. (read my blog: L’s are for Lessons). I would hope the since you are on my blog, you are looking to accept your truth too.

There is no shame what so ever that comes with accepting your truth, it is actually a blessing to speak your truth and be free!

It is time to turn that mess into a message, you have a lot of people waiting on you to face your truth so that they can learn for you and live a life free from the fear of being judged.

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free

John 8:32

There are some of the approaches that I use to help me deal with denial that I think can help you too;

• Revisit all the bad experiences in your life that you know for sure that you continue to deny till this day; some of you might have to revisit your childhood, teenage years and most recent events in your adult life.
• There may be some tears as you revisit some of these events, but that’s okay, tears heal the soul.
• Talk to someone you trust; a family member, a friend, a pastor, a counselor about this because you don’t have to go through this alone
• Write down the feelings that come with those bad events and ask yourself why those feelings are there
• Forgive yourself and others that were involved
• Spend time in prayer; fast if you can!
• Remind yourself that you an overcome despite all that happened you are still alive and strong!
• Face your truth because there is no need to be in denial when you have a whole life to live!

With that said, My prayer for you all is that God who is the truth steps into our lives and helps us realize soon enough that there is no profit that comes from denying our truth. To all that read this, let us accept our truth and let go of denial!