The path to receiving truth runs through offering it

​A gift you get when you hide a lot of your story in life is you get good at spotting when someone else is hiding a part of theirs. That gift becomes a hell of sorts when you spot that hiding in the eyes of one of your kids.

I've faced this in my life. First, you keep your secrets in a prison. Then your secrets turn on you - they begin to despise you - and then they take you captive. It's the cruelest twist in life; these things you do to protect yourself become the very things that try to destroy you.

As a dad, I've committed to do everything I can to make sure neither of my boys ever get destroyed in that way. The problem is, it's easy to say I'm committed - it can be the hardest thing in the world to honor that commitment.

Because the day comes when you have to sit down with your kid and ask for his secret. You have to ask him for this thing he thinks is protecting himself and others. You have to ask because you know the pain of otherwise. You have to ask because you made a commitment.

But the hard part - the part that has always been hard for me - you know the only possible way you're getting to that secret is by offering up your own secrets. You know the only way you're getting truth is by showing truth. You know the only way you're ever going to get your kid to risk condemnation is by risking condemnation.

And so we sat there on the porch. The two of us in old rusty chairs. Both of us knowing, I think, we were embarking on a conversation filled with enough discomfort to make what we were sitting in irrelevant. There's a reason we don't share the hard stuff in life; it's much harder than sharing the easy stuff.

But the easy stuff doesn't threaten to hold your kid hostage all his life.

So I said to him, I need to ask you something - but first I need to tell you something. And I told him a lot about how I came to be who I am today. I told him a lot about how we came to be who we are today. I told him the stuff that put me at risk of him looking at me as lowly as I have been prone to look at myself. I told him the stuff that put me at risk of having my son join the circle of judgment instead of releasing me from it.

Then I saw his tears. The tears that secrets hide. At first the tears were for me and for all the captives in me being set free. They were tears that wanted to hug the captives and not condemn them. They were tears that welcomed the release from perfection that comes when you hear the imperfections of someone you love.

Then the tears were his. The captives he set free. There was joy in those tears - the joy that comes with discovering this thing we fear will escape is not only allowed to escape - it's supposed to.

Then we hugged. And in many ways it was a first hug. Because you become different people when you allow yourself to be real people.

When you insist on it of one another.

I tell you all this because so many of us are in captivity. We are and our tears are and our truths are. They are because we in many ways fear condemnation; many of us fear it because too often that fear is realized.

So maybe we all just work on this with each other. Work on being braver with telling our stories and more compassionately hearing each other's stories.

Because that is what sets the stage for us all imagining different stories in our lives. Stories that are about freedom and not captivity.

And I can tell you - I have looked at life from both sides now - there is nothing better than a freedom story.

There is nothing better than a freedom hug.