What is Truth?

As a couple and family therapist, I spend a surprising amount of time talking about "the truth." Couples I work with spend vast amounts of time "discussing" (that's putting it politely, in some cases) who remembers an argument correctly and how they can tell when their partner is telling the truth...or not. My non-therapist friends ask me things like, "So what's the truth about marriage? Is it worth or it not?" Academic types like myself do woefully exciting things on Friday nights like read long-winded research articles looking for statistical differences between treatment groups, and I am lucky enough to be in a field that doesn't tend to look for "the truth" and an end-all, be-all answer to the deepest of life's questions about what is love and what is forgiveness and what is trust. Rather, my love for research is fueled by insatiable curiosity and a fascination with the unknown. I'm young and adventurous enough to think it's exciting to search endlessly for something, knowing I will never find one solitary answer. So when I'm doing research at midnight and sitting at my desk drinking green tea and eating a(nother) handful of gummy bears, I don't bother myself with looking for the truth. The search is just as thrilling.

Which brings me to my point...what is the truth? This is why lazy Sunday afternoons are dangerous; my mind takes me on wandering journeys. And I love it. And if you're reading this post, I'm guessing you're not opposed to my wandering mind journeys either. Truth. That's a small word with a complex meaning. As a therapist who ascribes to many postmodern and social constructionist ideals, I believe that truth is what we create. As humans, we are meaning-making creatures. If I look for every possible way you are an untrustworthy, callous jerk, I will probably find all sorts of evidence to back up my truth and prove myself "right." If, however, I look for ways in which you are kind to me or to other people, I can probably find evidence of that, too. I create what I want to create.

Our truths are always overshadowed by our life experiences, our fears, our doubts, our hopes, our desires, our prejudices, our running script of what we "should" do. We never have the exact same carbon-copy truth as anyone else. How beautiful, how messy, how divine, is that?? You and I can have a conversation, and we will both remember it totally differently. We will walk away from the same conversation, the same experience, the same interaction with different feelings, different thoughts, and different ways in which this has impacted our world.  

I cannot speak for others. I don't know what your truth is. But as I now have been around on this planet for an (almost) whopping quarter of a century, I have been doing some thinking about what my truth is. So I asked myself, "What truth do I want to create?" Here it goes:

My truth is that we are all children of the light. We are meant to be chasers of humility and sowers of goodness and bringers of joy - I'm talking real joy, not just fleeting, earthly happiness. This is where truth is found: in relationship with one another. We are hungry for connection in our world. We are meant to reach outside of ourselves and touch each other - sometimes in ways that leave deep, lasting marks, and sometimes in quiet ways that leave only faint traces. We are created not for ourselves alone, but for each other, and to honor and follow a God who sacrifices all for us.

So that's it - that's my truth, pure and simple. It isn't a long truth, and I never said I needed it to be right. It doesn't even need to be your truth. In fact, I wouldn't want it to be your truth because I believe you should create your own. My truth comes from a God who is brave enough to say, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" and who constantly, quietly, persistently invites me to follow him through darkness and light alike. So as I continue letting myself fall into a relationship with this God who loves me to so tenderly and so fiercely, I strive to be a tireless seeker of (my) truth and a follower of the light.