If you are in false harmony with someone, consider asking yourself, "Do I want to live this way and continue ot wear the mask?"

 Good Morning,

I pray the day finds you well.

The frog joke lives on!

I was at the spa with my wife last night. We enjoy going there, where we would sit in saunas and take cold plunges. It seems to help both my mental state and my body.  

We were sitting in the sauna with a bunch of people, and I asked if anyone knew anything about frogs. To my surprise, there were a few who knew quite a bit about frogs. After a rather spirited conversation about frogs, I hit the punch line. There was a mix of laughter, groans, and "Oh my god, that was a joke."

I wanted to let you know it is still alive. If you don't get the joke, feel free to ask a friend or leave a comment. 

I was talking to a friend this morning, it has become a ritual. We talk almost every day. He was justifying why he didn't do something. 

Justification of behavior, while it may work in the short term, never seems to end well. 

I will tell you a story, a story of how I lost a friend.

It is entitled, "Taking a mole hill and turning it into a mountain."

One day, I was talking to a woman I knew. We had known each other for a while, and things were starting to get serious. 

While this happened very long ago. This was a relationship after my first wife and before I met Laurie, my forever wife. It still bothers me, as I lost a good friend.

I will call her Mary, not her real name, but a story always goes better with a name attached. 

One of the best things about our relationship was our conversations. We were each other's best friends, and our superpower was talking things through; no matter what it was, we could talk it through and build a deeper trust and bond because of it.

Then one day she lied to me, not a little unimportant lie. Like, "Honey, do these pants make my butt look big?" That is a lie I could live with. No, this was a bigger lie, a lie that hurt. 

We were talking, having a good conversation when she lied. I knew immediately that she lied, it was written all over her face. 

A said, "You lied to me."

She said, "No, I didn't."

I said, "It is written all over your face."

She said, "I need you to believe me."

We went back and forth for a bit until I finally said, "I believe you." even though I didn't.

This is what I would later call a crucial conversation. 

Crucial conversations are those that happen unexpectedly, often out of nowhere. If not addressed properly, or not at all, they can change the course of a relationship, sometimes fatally.

I knew at that time our relationship had just changed, but I didn't realize how drastically it had changed until much later. 

Why had she lied, and why did I lie back? 

I genuinely believe she lied because she feared I would end the relationship and change how I saw her. Why did I lie? I lied because I feared not acquiescing would end the relationship. 

I just didn't know that it was at that point the relationship had ended; it just took two years for the cancer to run its course and kill it.

We had both learned something that day.

She learned she could lie to me. 

I learned that I would let her.

By both of us agreeing to believe the lie, we had kept our relationship harmonious. Unfortunately, it was a false harmony. 

Here is the problem with false harmony.

While false harmony may seem to work in the short term, false harmony never lasts. 

Because she learned she could lie to me, her behavior didn't change. 

Time would go by, and the pain of the lie would cause me to bring up the subject again.

She would lie again, but this time I would argue back, and she would argue until I would tell another lie and say, "I believe you." We both lied because we knew it would probably end the relationship. 

Eventually, I could not tolerate the lie anymore and ended the relationship. It didn't end well, as you could imagine. 

We haven't spoken since. A lot of time has passed, and occasionally I think about our conversations and how good they had been before the lie. And how surface-level they had become after the lie. We would still talk about deep things, but never truly believed them. After all, who could trust a person who lies to them so easily? Even when we talked about a future together, I knew there wasn't one. 

I am lucky, and very blessed to have a partner in life that I can have those conversations with; to laugh and to cry, to go deep and be able to trust her with my feelings and be completely vulnerable because I trust her completely. Laurie may lie once in a while, and I appreciate it when she does. After all, nobody wants to know that it isn't the pants that make their butt look big. 

Why did I tell you this story? I told you because we all justify our behaviour in some sort of fashion. This justification can be devastating. I know that if we had both just had the courage and trust in our relationship, the same courage that Laurie and I have in ours. We quite possibly would still be friends, even if we never talked to each other again. 

Nobody wants things to end badly. 

Ending badly doesn't come out of nowhere, and it never feels good. 

There is enough hurt in our world; let's not add to it by justifying a behaviour that creates false harmony.

If you are in false harmony with someone, consider asking yourself, "Do I want to live this way and continue ot wear the mask, or do I want to remove the mask and live an authentic life and not have to worry about the lie and how to tell it?"

Even more importantly, are you lying to God?

Something to ponder.

Blessings,

Roger