I have been thinking about how crisis reveals truth. What does difficulty show about the underlying fabric of a home, marriage, business, or nation?  When pressure mounts and life becomes hard, and all essentials are stripped away, what do we find?

My root sin based on my Enneagram number is anger. When I get hurt, or something breaks, or someone does something wrong, I immediately feel anger. It’s not logical. It is irrational anger that is sudden and aggressive. I was surprised by it when my intense anger first arrived. Crisis and fear revealed it, unmasking the lurking remnants of generations of abusive people.

At first, I felt shame about this which equated to justification, minimizing and other self-protective responses. It wasn’t until I was willing to face my sin and shame that I began to heal. The process reminds me of the beautiful way Alcoholics Anonymous works. It is through our honest confession and dependance on God rather than our own strength that we are healed.  

My parents understood this process and the tendency during crisis for our ugliest and most difficult proclivities and secrets to be exposed. They were infinitely graceful.  

Dad always led from a place of listening. His grace brought so much healing to me. I consider this when I want to be severe with other people’s shortcomings that become revealed in crisis. When I hold my daughters now as my mom and dad held me, I know grace changes me.  

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. – Romans 5:20–21

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