Today I’m going fishing. This is a common occurrence for my other two brothers who live locally. They each have boats and go fishing almost weekly. I might go yearly. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy fishing, I truly do. The passion for it just isn’t the same as theirs. I use to wonder why God made me such a freak? Why am I not good at all the things they are good at doing and why are the things I enjoy so different from them?

As I have learned to confess all of this instead of bottling it all inside me, I find that differences don’t make us a freak. It makes us different/unique and that’s all. God sure never intended for us to be clones of one another. Last night in the step study group one of the guys had asked me last week if we could talk afterwards the coming week? I told him I’d plan on it. So, last night he opened up to me telling me how he didn’t want to do the inventory because he’d have to confess so many things he felt made him ashamed of who he is. He’d rather live out his life with all of it a secret. (He is 39–the same age I was when I finally went for help/counseling the first time).

Listening to him brought back so many of my own thoughts and feelings. After he was done telling me all of this, I was able to help him see that keeping all of this inside creates the prisoner feeling we all have when we keep it bottled up. God won’t help turn these things into lessons for our learning until we begin to confess and open up. This is when James 5:16 begins to play out in our lives. This verse say: “Confess our sins one to another and we will be healed….” As we left he said he would take the risk. God is so AMAZING!