Hope Is AliveMuestra

"Confession"

It was 10:15, the morning of April 6, 2011. I was on my cell in my office, staring uncomprehendingly at my computer, eyes blurred, lethargic, and stoned. I’d just sniffed about 60mg of my typical morning cocktail: 2/3 OxyContin, (enough to get my high for 30 minutes or so) and 1/3 Lortab (to feel the burn). As I mentally withdrew from the phone conversation, my head began to get heavy and I started nodding off. 

A few seconds later my head popped up violently to a pounding on my locked office door that could only come from one person: my boss, who happened to also be my uncle. 

“Lance!” he screamed. “Open the door!” 

“Coming,” I mumbled, hurriedly sliding all my drug paraphernalia into my top drawer and scurrying over to open the door. 

“Come with me. We need to talk.” 

“O…kay,” I answered slowly, following him to his office. 

We stepped into his office and I took a seat in front of his big, bold, dark brown desk. In that moment, I knew what was about to happen. I knew he was going to ask me what was wrong. 

But I wasn’t going to tell him. I had too much to lose. 

For years, I had worked with everything I had to protect my secret (only later would I find out what a horrible job I had done covering up a glaringly obvious addiction). Nevertheless, on that day, as guilty as I was, I wasn’t about to admit to it. After several rounds of arguing, voices rising and fists pounding on the desk, both our emotions had skyrocketed, and that’s when it happened. 

Uncle Pat stared me down from across that big, mahogany desk and peered into my soul like no man ever had before. “Lance,” he said, “what is wrong with you?” 

My head instantly dropped. As sweat bubbled up on my forehead, he continued: “For the past year you have been late to work every day. You’re lazy, lethargic. Half the time I can’t find you or get hold of you, and when I do, you lie about where you are and what you’re doing. I’m sick of it, and you are not leaving my office until you tell me what’s going on and we figure out what we’re going to do about it.”

When he finished, I knew I was finished. 

I hung my head, weighed down by all the guilt and shame of my past, the professional disappointment I had become, and the destruction of every relationship I cherished, and tears began forming in my eyes. 

But as I mustered the energy to raise my head and look at the man confronting me, with the reality looming of what I had become, I began to weep. Uncontrollably. I cried for what seemed like hours as I began for the first time ever to paint the mental picture of what my life really was like. Why I looked the way I did, where I would go when I would disappear, what drugs I was taking, and how I couldn’t stop no matter how hard I tried. 

Ultimately I believe everything in my life lead up to that one confession moment. That was my time. I had spent my years squandering my existence and within a moment my life began to turn around. As the words slowly poured out of my mouth, I believe God began sprinting in my direction. 

You see that’s the power of confession. It breaks the chains that bind us. The first step towards walking in freedom is confession. Today, is there something in your life you need to confess? If so, find someone you can trust and take this first step! There is POWER in confession!