Creative people lie.
Lying is part of the gift of creativity.
I can improvise anything on the spot. I have a wild imagination that makes up nonsensical scenes just for humor’s sake. I can write a story about someone I’ve never met, and make you think it really happened. I can create an entire backstory on someone for fun. I see different angles in movies that others don’t see because that’s just how my mind is wired. I’m made differently.
When people ask about how I got an injury, sometimes I like to make up an elaborate story about how a whale dropped out of the sky and landed on my leg or something. Then I laugh and tell them I actually just ran into a door, or whatever actually happened.
But what about the little embellishments that make my stories better? What about the little extra emphasis on what happened in order to capture an audience’s attention?
For the majority of my life, stories have come easily to me. I’m a writer and enjoy acting; it’s what I do. I also used to love to please people and manipulate their emotions with the “extra” facts in a story that made it “better”. It flowed easily for me.
Over the past couple years, God has been rewiring me completely. I’ve been more acutely aware of the little lies, and had to correct myself and apologize for lying. Little things started becoming blatantly obvious to me like, “I was in the hospital for 5 hours waiting!! …well, actually, it was 4 hours. No it was two. It was two hours, but it felt like 5!” Why did I do that? Why did I crank every story up to maximum hyperbole?
Because my aim was to please humans, and humans LOVE drama. The bigger the better! God began weeding these small lies out of me one by one, until I stopped hyperbolizing and started telling the truth. Sometimes I still catch myself caught up in the wave of an exciting story, and catch myself slipping into embellishment. I have to constantly be aware of what I say, and it’s a growing and constant process for me.
Before Jesus started rewiring me, I noticed that after years of embellishing stories, I realized that every relationship I had was based on a lie. Nearly everything people thought about me was only half true. I couldn’t go back and fix any of it, because then my credibility on every story would be put into question. I had to keep living the lies I had built up around myself. I had trapped myself in what felt like an unbreakable fortress that I had built with my own lips.
I was excited about starting the World Race with a group of people who didn’t know anything about me. I could begin friendships truthfully. I could allow people to know the REAL Sarah, and then maybe, just maybe, I could meet her too. I began to learn that the real Sarah’s identity was kept for safekeeping in the character of Christ. I began to learn that I would never truly know the real Sarah until I knew the real Jesus.
And then on month 2 of the World Race, I lied. I lied BIG. I so desperately wanted all these amazing people on my squad to like me that I told them that my amnesia of 18 years was healed. I tried to believe it too. I believed things like, “You won’t be fully healed and able to operate in your gifts until you are walking in healing” or “You just have to believe you’re healed” or “You just have to have faith” or “You just don’t know how memories work yet.”
Once again I built up a false entrapment around me, and every time I would state I was healed or someone else would mention it, I would mentally abuse myself. “I just don’t have enough faith” or “I can make these memories come back on my own if I just believe it” or “No one will trust me again if I go back on this.”
Finally after five months of building up fabricated walls, I felt convicted of my lie, and I desired freedom. I asked for God’s forgiveness, which he gave freely, and then I knew that I had to tell my team what I had done. I knew that only grace could break down my walls, and love would pick me back up again.
“Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” Proverbs 28:13
Through my tears, I admitted my dirty sin to my teammates. I felt like a warrior who had just ripped off all her armor in the middle of a battlefield—exposed and stupid. My team helped me rip down the rest of the walls, and embraced me in grace and mercy. They helped pick up my broken pieces, and helped me realize that I live in a broken world where pain and affliction are guaranteed; while perfect healing isn’t promised until we live in heaven.
What I didn’t see happening is the pain my lies had caused others. I was so blinded by my own entrapment that I just couldn’t see the entanglement of lies I had set up had caused others to fall too. A girl on my squad knew I was lying from day one, but kept it to herself. She carried a past of distrust and hurt from others, and my lie grew her distrust of our squad as a whole. My lie hindered her growth.
“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” Galatians 6:7-8
It was time to reap what I had sown. I had sown deceit and my reaping was an injured sister and a trust that I had broken. She sat down with me after I admitted my lie, and made me aware of the pain I had caused her from my sin.
She left me alone to process what she had told me and I completely fell apart. Satan jumped on the opportunity to scream lies into my distraught state, “How could someone expect me to apologize for causing them pain when I was suffering under the same delusion and self-agony the entire time?”
But she was right.
I had sown deceit and now I was reaping destruction. I don’t know how many times I have to learn that sin has consequences in this life, but you’d think I’d have figured that out by now.
After internally abusing myself and allowing the enemy’s lies to grow and dominate my thoughts, I lay at the feet of Jesus and through my tears asked him how I was supposed to fix this. He gave me a vision of all the things trying to rip me away from him, and then he stepped in and held them back. I sat crumpled and too bruised to stand up, yet he came and clothed me in his righteousness and whispered in my ear, “Sarah, I forgive you. You have to forgive yourself now.”
I wrote down an honest apology to my teammate, and went and found her. I sat down with her, and read her an apology that could only come after spending time with Jesus.
The plain truth is that I hurt her. I broke the trust between us, and there isn’t a quick fix. It’s going to take time and grace and a ton of Jesus, but it will heal. I’m done lying. I’m done searching for a friendship through a web of lies. I want to just be 100% Sarah Bohlman, and not anything more or less.
There’s only one thing left—
Dear Q squad,
I’m so sorry I lied to you. I can’t tell you how badly I wish I hadn’t, but I did and now I have to face the truth. You are each wonderful, and amazing warriors for God and I am deeply honored to be on this battlefield with each of you. As I continue in this walk of giving grace for myself, I ask forgiveness from each one of you. I screwed up big, and I hurt others in my sin. If I hurt anyone else from this deceit, please accept my promise to strive for truth and attempt to regain your trust. I understand the hurt and anger this causes, and I’m sorry I’m the source of that. Please don’t stop trusting God’s truth because of my brokenness. I love each one of you very much, and I’m heartbroken that I could be a source of pain.
Only by his grace,
Sarah Rebecca Bohlman
