A Shock of Truth: Installment Three

Courage:  from the Latin cor for heart

Integrity:  from the Latin integritatem for wholeness

I was going to need a lot of this - a lot of heart; that much I could see.  What I could not see, though, not yet, was that the blonde boy standing on the other side of the room, huddled up between the dresser and the bedroom door (in position to flee?), already possessed more heart than I on my best day.

This was far from my best day.  My best day was on sabbatical somewhere out west where it could breathe.  My best day had deserted me and was sunning itself by some pool in Arizona, sipping filtered water infused with lemons and limes.

My brain, scrambling like it had just come front and center with a word problem, refused - refused! - to assimilate the information placed in front of me.  Instead, it pulled me off to the side and whispered a million different reasons why this could. not. be. true.  I wanted to resist; surely some part of me wanted to resist - wanted to review the evidence I'd seen on the horizon, building strength like a Nebraska storm cloud in August, wanted to acknowledge that those inklings had been spot-on - but I dared not trust myself.  If I remembered nothing else from those years and years of collective pastors' voices ringing in my ears, I remembered what was etched in my mind like a tattoo: Our hearts are deceitful and wicked beyond measure.  They are never to be trusted.

Which of us was deceived?  Which of us - the boy huddled by the door, ready to flee, or the mother clasping the wooden bed post to keep from falling - which one of us was party to a lie?

It is said somewhere that courage is the foundation of integrity.

That must mean that the one who knows who he is at the heart is the one who is whole.

Oh. God.

Then where did that leave me?