Lies and Love

We are all liars. We lie to each other, but mostly we lie to ourselves. We create these ideals of what and who we are, and when things happen in our lives, we often get hurt and confused when they turn out to be something we didn’t expect. We don’t mean to lie to ourselves, in fact, we don’t often know we’re doing it. But the pain of the lies we tell ourselves, well, the pain hurts us really bad. Most often, even in the midst of the pain, we can sometimes still refuse to see the truth.

Why do we think it hurts so much when we’re disappointed, when our faith is tested and we’re deemed wanting? We hurt partly because we believe we failed on some level, but mostly because we were deceived, things didn’t turn out as we had imagined them, as we had hoped, as we had believed. We try to blame everything and everyone else for that pain. But if we really look at each situation in our lives, the worse of the pain stems from realizing we were wrong.

When I found out I had cancer, I instantly wondered what I had done wrong in my life to have deserved this punishment, to have earned this disease. That’s how I’m programmed to believe, that there are consequences for my actions, that for every action there’s an equal or opposite reaction, or there’s a blood price to pay for the sins we commit. When my ex-husband told me that he was never attracted to me or was never in love with me, I thought I deserved that, too. I didn’t deserve to be loved. The things I loved died. When my father would beat me for talking back to him or denying him, I thought I deserved the pain. The things I challenged hurt me. I was disobedient, and how can the universe, God, faith, or science honor disobedience? Even the natural laws of the universe have abstracts. When my oldest daughter ran away from home, I thought I too deserved that, after all… I ran away. I had just begun the journey of loving myself, loving my body, and loving my mind, and daring to love someone else when the cancer attacked. But it wasn’t the cancer that hurt me; it was the lies, the fantasy of a life I had created for myself, and those around me.

I ran, not so much from the people I loved from this crazy idea that it would hurt them less when I died if I was already gone, but I think I ran more from the dissolution of the dream world I’d built for myself, the hope of a life I dared to dream, and the reality of that dream didn’t live up the fantasy. Not even the man I thought I loved lived up to the man I had imagined. That’s not his fault, that was mine. It was unfair for me to build him as I had. He was perfect. He was simply amazing. Was he as I imagined him? Far from it, but I liked the lie. I fell in love with it. But as with all lies, the truth finally revealed itself, and I got hurt. No, I shattered.

So, here I am now, at a new place in my life, a strange place, because I can’t explain what happened to me, what happened to that dreamer, but I somehow I changed. I have slowly been piecing myself back together. While there are familiar fragments of the woman I used to be, I’m something different, I’m something new and the way I look at life, love, and living is something new too. Could it be another lie I’m telling myself? Maybe. I know I’m capable of it. I’m a writer after all, which makes me a master manipulator, an imaginative dreamer.

I don’t say this about being a liar as something derogatory. On the contrary, some of the lies are beautiful. The truth is always hard, always absolute, always concrete, but we are fluid, moldable, movable. The truth of life for me at this time is that not everything in my life is beautiful. There are struggles, there are strings, there are twists and turns, uncertainties, and a whole lot of choices. But there’s also adventure, discovery, and even love.

I’m falling in love again… in love with my life, in love with my body, in love with my mind, in love with my gifts, in love with my passions, in love with my sense of adventure, and in love with love. I might also be falling in love with this one particular Dominican Marine. Love has hurt me deeply before, broken me, shattered me, but I’m ready to try again. I’m ready to dream again, and the truth is… this is what living is all about – falling down and getting back up again. Love isn’t the broken pieces of my life, it’s the glue that keeps putting those broken pieces back together again. And that, my friend, is no lie.



Till next time,



~T.L. Gray

Sun-Kissed

I hear the sound of the pouring rain outside my office and I can’t stop the smile forming across my face. The tempest outside is loud. It’s hard. It wonderfully glorious. Not because I particularly like the rain, which I do, but because I feel as though my naked soul stands beneath a majestic downpour filled with new grace, new life, and new beginnings. I’ve carried around the ashes of grief long enough. I feel light. I feel …ready.

For the first time in my life my present, my life, and my future belong to me, and only me. I’m alive. I’m free. I won’t be chasing dead dreams, but dreaming new ones.

Love me, hate me, envy me, or despise me – I honestly don’t care. Just watch me - amazing things are happening!!!!!!!

It was once prophesied over me that I had been called before I was born, marked and targeted; that my life would be shattered into a million pieces; that there were several tentacle arms reaching out to grab and bind me and keep me from my mission; and that like a ship I would be dashed upon the rocks and left for dead. Yet a tempest would come and wash away the debris and I would rise from the wreckage with 9 stars above my head, sun-kissed, strong, wielding a sword, with coal-touched lips filled with words of fire that would weave its way through the universe and touch the hearts and minds of kings and priests.

When I heard that prophecy the creative writer in me thought it’d make for a good story, but was certain the minister who gave it must clearly be mistaken, confused, and perhaps a little crazy. But those words have never left me. I’d laugh them off at times, chuckle at their absurdity, roll my eyes at their sensationalism, and shake my head. I have no idea what it even means, but perhaps there’s something subconsciously inside me that likes the rain because I’m clinging to a hope for this prophesied relief.

It doesn’t matter. Whether the prophecy is real or a joke, I feel my soul dancing in the rain. I have been shattered, abandoned and broken as I tangled with death – death of a dream, death of a promise, death of a marriage, and death of a friendship – yet I’m still alive. Even cancer couldn’t defeat me.

What do I do now?

I LIVE!

Till next time,



~T.L. Gray