As MJ and I sat down to talk on the night of the confession one of the things we talked about was how to share our story with our kids.

If you haven’t read my account of that night, you may want to go catch up on that prior to reading this. That night, in the span of 48 hours, I unpacked 15 years of hell in high definition, coming clean to my wife about the sin and shame that I had carefully hidden for so long.

“How are we going to tell the kids? They’re old enough to hate me … ” my voice trailed off and I buried my head in my hands and wept with abandon. It was too much to bear to think about this right now. MJ assured me that we would cross that bridge when we both felt it was time. For now, we needed to focus on rebuilding our marriage.

“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.”

— James 5:16 NLT

We have four teens (our youngest daughter is 11 going on 18 ;) and we’ve always been a close-knit family. Our relationships with our teenage kids have been wonderful for the most part, certainly more than I deserve after all the trouble I caused my parents when I was a teen.

Leading up to that terrible night, one of the things I wrestled with God about was whether it was necessary for me to go into detail and confess my failures to my wife and family. “It’s all in the past now, and I’m good now” the argument with God would go. “Why do I have to risk blowing up my entire life now?”. A dramatic spiritual encounter with Jesus had completely reoriented my life. I had broken free from the old patterns of behavior that had dragged me into hell for so long. Did I really have to speak the truth about ALL of this?

The enemy had two specific temptations related to my kids that I want to point out here. There were two separate patterns of fear, specific to my sons and my daughters. If I told my sons about my sin, wouldn’t that make them more vulnerable to be tempted in the same way? If I told my daughters about my sin, wouldn’t they be disgusted by me? Surely they would all reject me, Satan whispered.

“Everything you need is on the other side of the thing you fear the most” God beckoned to me. Night after sleepless night I begged Him to let me go, but He kept inviting me, gently at first, then more persistently.

“Everything you need is on the other side of the thing you fear the most”

— God's whisper to me

Three months after the confession we took a two-week-long road trip as a family. We piled our SUV high with camping gear, a dirt bike, and all of our luggage for a few weeks on the road. From our home just south of Nashville, we visited friends and family in a big loop from Florida to Pennsylvania to Ohio and back to Tennesee. In the midst of a stressful season at work and coming on the heels of a nuclear blast going off in our marriage, the trip was just what we needed to rest, rejuvenate, and adventure together.

“I feel like it’s time to tell the kids soon,” I said to MJ one day in the midst of our road trip. “I was just thinking the same thing” she replied. “I’ll let you decide when you’re ready and how you want to do it, but I’ll support you fully whenever you’re ready” she assured me.

Since the confession, MJ and I had spent countless hours in conversation. The walls between us had been dismantled and we were getting to know each other all over again. Our children had to know something was going on with Mom and Dad. Suddenly we were spending two hours a day locked in a deep ongoing dialog. As we talked, we healed. We would talk, fight, laugh, cry, pray, and talk some more.

That night we all went out for dinner. After we had eaten, I gathered the courage to start telling my children about my shame. About the ways in which I had broken their mother’s heart and betrayed all of their trust.

I had learned at work that if you need to have a difficult conversation with someone, it’s best to be clear and kind. Don’t beat around the bush or hem and haw. Just say what needs to be said. So I did that the best I could.

It was a sacred conversation as I peeled back the layers and sat surrounded by my family. MJ’s eyes were strong and bright and full of love, gazing at me across the table as I confessed my sin to our kids.

The next part of the evening didn’t go as I planned. As we pushed back from the table, MJ made a suggestion I hadn’t expected. “We should go out for ice cream tonight” she announced to cheers of agreement from the rest of us. Then she kind of blew my mind a little bit. “We’re going to celebrate tonight. We’re going to go get big ice cream sundaes and celebrate because that’s how we roll in this family. We celebrate confession. We celebrate vulnerability. Your dad just showed us all an example of what it means to be vulnerable and truthful even when it’s brutally hard, and we’re going to celebrate!”

It was such a moving and delightful experience. That evening before bed one of the kids came to me and said “Dad… I, uh, want to confess something to you that I’ve been struggling with. I know you’ll understand what I’m going through right now, with everything you’ve experienced.” We talked, cried, prayed, and celebrated together as the light began to shine in a place that had been hidden.

Growing up in a fundamentalist church, my idea of confession was totally different than what I was now experiencing with God. In my mind, confession was something you had to do when you got caught doing something bad. It was often accompanied by a good deal of shame and fear of judgment. From time to time some unfortunate soul would be found in sin, then trotted out in front of the church to confess their sins in front of the congregation. This was primarily limited to the more shameful sins of the flesh of course - I don’t recall anyone being asked to own up to gluttony or pride, but I digress.

My journey over the past year had opened my eyes to the beauty and the utility of this transformational process of confession and repentance. Sadly, those words had been weaponized in the service of a fear-based ‘gospel’ and I was blinded to their true meaning.

Think about it: it’s actually really good news to know that no matter where you are in life, whatever mess you’ve made for yourself, there is a process by which you can be changed into something more like who you were created to be. Something more like God.

Deepest Fears, Deepest Desires

As we rebuilt our marriage, one of the first cornerstones we set was that we would hold space for each other to be completely honest and truthful about our deepest fears and our deepest desires. We would create an environment that was free of fear and shame, seeking only to love and understand as we opened our hearts to each other. We would live in a confessional relationship with each other and with our God. We could see no other way forward.

This commitment spilled over into our family that night in Florida as we went out for ice cream with the family and we’ve done our best to live that out. Several months later, as I was drifting off to sleep, one of our kids came to our bedroom and asked to talk to me about something. We spent the next hour untangling a web of hurts and resentment, speaking as truthfully and carefully as we could. We wept and confessed and repented and prayed together, then we got up and raided the freezer for ice cream and stayed up until 4 am watching our favorite TV show. We’re dead serious about celebrating truth-telling and confession!

Another late night, (does anyone know why these conversations always happen late at night?) a conversation with one of our teens led to another confession. More truth-telling, hugging, realigning and crying, followed by a 1 am run to Taco Bell, because we know nothing says celebration like tacos, right?

We’re far from perfect. We hurt each other too often, and we miss the mark a lot. We don’t love each other as well as we could. But we keep being transformed by this God who loves us so richly and who keeps inviting us to know Him and be known by Him. So we keep loving and we keep speaking the truth as carefully as we can.

What about you? Are there areas of shame and judgement that you need to let go of and simply embrace the transformative process of truthful loving speech?

As always, thank you for being here. Today it’s been exactly a month since this blog launched, and we’ve been blown away by your love and support. Your emails, DMs and comments tell us that we are indeed not alone on our journey.

The blog has been viewed more than 11,000 times in 23 countries all across the globe which is so encouraging, because it means our readers are sharing the blog with their friends who need a message of hope and love. We couldn’t be more thankful.