Honesty

Lately, there have been a lot of voices coming at me from a lot of different directions.

Advice.

Names.

Accusations.

Questions.

Shouts.

Whispers.

And it's been up to me to separate truth from lies, to figure out what I should believe and what is the enemy trying to seep into my soul.  Slowly but surely, I'm getting it.  I'm stumbling, and I don't always respond the right way the first time, but step by step, I'm figuring out right from wrong and how to eliminate the bad voices from my mind.

That's why, today, I'm thankful for honesty.  I'm thankful for the voices of the people who love me who have pushed to be the loudest ones of all.  I'm thankful for the people who have been here to tell me who I really am and what I really deserve when I've been weak and more susceptible to believing the lies.

I'm thankful for the friends, new and old, that I can rely on to tell me the truth, no matter what.

I'm also thankful for the people who give me exactly what I give them - blunt honesty, even when it's not what I want to hear.  The friends who are willing to call me out on my crap are the ones who know what I need to hear and tell it to me.  And they almost always end up doing it at the times when I need it most.

Sometimes honesty feels like a dying art, so that's why, today, I'm thankful for the people in my life who value it as much as I do.  Someone once told me that my penchant for always being honest was what turned people off...turns out, I just had to wait a bit to find the people that would appreciate it.