“You are only as sick as your secrets.”
Dear Duggars,
At first when the story hit the news I didn’t believe it. I thought it was just some anti-Christian slander.
But then you told the truth.
Incest is part of my childhood story too. It was one of the family secrets that was locked away for a very long time. It was locked away for so long it grew rotten. It spread disease and festered until the family unit was eaten away like gangrene.
We never told. We never healed. We never asked Jesus to come into that broken place and heal it. Our family has never been put back together. Thirty-five years later we still don’t exist.
Our stories aren’t so different.
Thank you for finally telling us. Thank you for finally telling us the truth after all these years. I only wish you would have done it sooner and under different circumstances.
You have allowed your family to be portrayed as a model of Christian faith and virtue. You accepted the platform and allowed yourselves to become famous for radical faith. But you didn’t let us see the truth. You didn’t let us see the mistakes, the pain and the tragedy. In essence, you pretended to be something that you aren’t and that hurts.
It hurts fans. It hurts the kingdom. It hurts sinners who need to see real Christians who are real about their sin and who know a real God who heals.
I wish you would have understood that showing your weakness would have magnified the glory of God in your family. If you would have been vulnerable and showed the sin, the consequences and the shame we would have had no choice but to look at your family and say “God did it.”
Paul said:
I will boast only about my weaknesses… because I don’t want anyone to give me credit beyond what they can see in my life or hear in my message..
He said,“My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (from 2 Corinthians 12).
I hope you can do that now. I hope that you give voice to incest survivors like me. I hope that you will be real about the sin and real about the magnitude of the healing and salvation our God offers. We need that from you. We need it. We all need it.
Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. James 5:16
