Why is confession so important to repentance and healing?
I am not talking about the abstract confession that comes to mind, like you in a box, with a priest on the other side of a screen. I am talking about you telling the person you hurt, or even just someone else the hurt you have caused.
It is important because it is the beginning of the journey that corrects the pain of skewed action.
Picture this; the universe is a skyscraper. In this skyscraper every person has a room with four walls. This is the inner us. This is the place of our minds, emotions, and spirituality. No one can forcibly tell us how to decorate this room, how to be while we are in this room, or our choice of how and when we might leave this room to visit with another person in their room or let another into ours.
So now imagine that someone invited you into their room and you spilled something on their floor. You imprinted their room by your actions and they are hurt because of it. You immediately retreat to your own room because it hurts you to accept that you have hurt them.
While in your room you pace around. You change the décor a couple times to adjust for this uncomfortable feeling of “messing” someone else’s room. You begin to feel uncomfortable in this special place that is only you, and suddenly you are changing the décor over and over again in an attempt to find comfortableness.
Then it dawns on you, you will pace in this room forever unless you reach out to this other person and show them your room, and you should help them clean the mess you left. So you open the door between your rooms and knock on theirs, leaving your door open. They answer, but they are unwilling to fully open the door and let you in because they are still looking at the mess you left and wondering how they can clean it up.
When do they let you into their room? How do you cross the threshold?
Bingo! When you make your confession to them.
You accept that you hurt them and you ask for forgiveness, and you take positive action to help them clean their room. If the other person is open to repentance and ultimately forgiveness a wonderful and exciting thing happens. You and them can turn the mess you left into a new and possibly beautiful decoration in their room. It gets better too. Suddenly, a part of that decoration is now also in your room, and you like it. You have shared the inward you with someone else. You have discovered that you do not have to be alone. You have also discovered that it can feel good to let a person come into your room now and again and sign your wall.
Life is a journey, sharing it deepens it.
When my time comes to pass through death I hope to be able to look at the walls of my room and see innumerable signatures of other souls adorning my walls.
“The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.”
Saint Augustine
Beth's Journey 