Receiving the Mirror
As part of ministry entrance process, I was offered a mirror.
Not a verdict.
Not a diagnosis.
Not something to defend against or correct.
Just something to sit with.
At one point, the conversation paused—not on results or conclusions, but on resonance. The question wasn’t what does this say? but something quieter:
Does this make sense to you?
That question stayed.
After the Reflection Began
What followed wasn’t disagreement.
It was recognition—slow, unforced.
I realized that when I had answered questions about honesty and truth, I may have been responding to a different question than the one being asked.
Not because the question was wrong.
But because my way of seeing was different.
A Subtle Difference in Meaning
There is a familiar and necessary way of testing truth—
asking whether something is correct,
whether it aligns with facts,
whether it holds up under scrutiny.
That way of seeing matters.
It keeps us anchored in a shared world.
But there is another way truth makes itself known.
When I think about lying, I’m not first checking whether something is factually accurate. I’m listening for something else.
Can this be carried without breaking me?
Does saying this require me to split from what I know, what I feel, what I sense is true?
Some truths ask whether something is correct.
Others ask whether it can be carried without fracturing us.
My concern isn’t only whether something is true.
It’s whether it costs me integrity.
Once I noticed that distinction, I couldn’t unsee it.
The Cost Beneath Correctness
There are things one can say that are accurate and still corrosive—
sentences that meet every standard of truth while quietly hollowing something out inside.
There are explanations that sound right and feel wrong.
Justifications that are airtight and exhausting.
There are also moments of silence—of compliance, of technically correct speech—that don’t feel like honesty at all.
Not because they’re false,
but because they require a subtle misalignment to maintain.
Something has to be muted.
Something has to be set aside.
Something has to be carried quietly, out of view.
This isn’t about virtue.
It isn’t about moral superiority.
If anything, it’s about cost.
Learning to Notice the Toll
Over time, I’ve learned to pay attention to the internal price of coherence.
When something asks me to override what I know,
to numb what I feel,
or to rationalize what doesn’t sit right just to move forward,
I notice the toll.
Tension accumulates.
Explanations multiply.
Presence thins.
Even when everything looks clean on the surface.
What the Mirror Revealed
What that mirror helped me see—perhaps more clearly than before—is that this sensitivity to misalignment isn’t incidental.
It shapes how I answer questions.
How I speak.
How I withhold.
How carefully I choose my words.
It doesn’t show up as deception.
It shows up as a refusal to separate truth from wholeness.
It isn’t a rejection of truth.
It’s a refusal to let truth become something that fractures the self in order to be maintained.
What I Choose to Carry
In formation—in leadership—in life—
that feels like something worth attending to.
Because formation isn’t only about what we believe or what we can articulate.
It’s about what kind of human we become under pressure.
And what parts of ourselves we are willing to abandon in order to be seen as right, or clear, or correct.
There are many things we can get wrong and later repair.
Ideas can be corrected.
Beliefs can evolve.
Facts can be relearned.
But integrity, once routinely fractured, is much harder to recover.
And without it, even truth loses its grounding.
I find myself less interested now in being right,
and more interested in remaining whole.
If I’m going to carry anything forward—
into the lives of others,
into the work I do,
into the world I help shape—
it has to be something I can live inside
without leaving parts of myself behind.
That feels like a good place to begin.
This reflection opens into a longer inquiry on formation and stewardship.
Read→ What Survives the Flood