NERVOUS, ANXIOUS, WORRIED PEOPLE
I’ve listened to countless stories in the consulting room of people who create similar tensions for themselves because of their own actions. No one knows their secret. But they know.
And that’s enough.
Two lines of a poem—I don’t know who wrote them—sum up my point:
There is a secret in his breast
That will never let him rest.
Your secret may not be that you robbed a bank or murdered someone. It can be as simple as sneaking into a raspberry patch.
TELEGRAM IN THE NIGHT
Many years ago I was dean of men in a small college. One night, I had to deliver a telegram to one of the students in the men’s dormitory. Another student was standing in the hall, so I greeted him and went on to deliver the message.
On my way out, the same student approached me and said:
“I need to talk to you. Do you have a few minutes?”
As we strolled down the sidewalk, he blurted out:
“I have a confession to make. Every time I see you coming toward me I think you have found out what I have done. I’m tired of the suspense of hiding, and want to confess.”
He had repeatedly broken a rule that required students who had cars to have liability insurance if they transported other students. He had no such insurance. Often, he would load his car with fellow students and take off. They often joked about how easy it was to put one over on the dean.
They were right. I had no idea this was going on.
Can you picture this student? I’d often stop him on the sidewalk and make small talk. Simple pleasantries (I thought).
“How are you?”
“How is your car working?”
“Good-bye.”
Occasionally, I’d see him sitting on a bench with his girl friend (who often went riding with him), so I’d wander over to visit a few minutes with both of them.
“It’s bad enough when you’d stop me on the sidewalk. But when you’d come over toward where we were sitting on a bench, I’d get all tensed up and nervous. We always figured you had found us out, but then you’d just ask a few questions and walk away.”
THEN…FRAMED IN THE DOORWAY…HERE CAME THE DEAN
This is what the student had lived with. Then, suddenly this evening, the door opened. There, framed in the doorway and coming right at him, was the dean of men. He figured I was after him, but I walked right past without much more than a word.
“It shook me up when you came in,” he said. “I just can’t stand it any more.”
He was the author of his own misery because of his own behavior¬—chipping away at his own self-respect.
This student is not unusual. Most of the people I talk to have done what they wanted to do if they wanted to do it bad enough–rules or no rules, promises or no promises, standards or no standards.
When we do so, we must live with whatever tension goes with it—sometimes much and sometimes little. You don’t break God’s laws (disobey authority) without paying a personal price of inner tension.