What secret are you keeping?
Many of us keep secrets to protect ourselves. But secrets also hide us from others. They can prevent us from being fully known and fully loved.
In this blog post, read the Java with Juli conversation Jason VanRuler, author of “Get Past Your Past”, had with Dr. Juli Slattery where he shared some insights about secrecy and why it’s worth us living in the light.
Prefer to listen? You can also listen to the full conversation here.
Juli (00:00:00)
Hey friend, welcome to Java with Juli. I’m Juli Slattery. And let me remind you that this is a listener supported podcast. It’s an outreach of the ministry called Authentic Intimacy. Well, unfortunately, I think we’ve all experienced the shock of finding out that someone we love or maybe a leader we respect has been keeping a big secret. And often those secrets come out in a crisis leading to a broken family or a broken ministry.
There are always wounded people in its wake. But the truth is, we are all vulnerable to keeping a secret that can turn toxic. We all know what it feels like to battle a sin or to have a weakness that makes us want to hide or to pretend. Secrets will kill intimacy, they fuel our shame, and sometimes they begin to take on a life of their own where you feel like you just can’t tell the truth. My guest today is going to help us look into this dynamic. His name is Jason VanRuler.
He’s a licensed therapist and author, speaker and coach, and he has become known as the therapist who helps people recover from disastrous secrets. And Jason’s message really is a wake up call for all of us to be courageous enough to pursue and tell the truth rather than letting our secrets keep us in hiding. So I hope you enjoy my conversation with Jason VanRuler.
Juli (01:27.672)
Well, welcome to Java with Juli, Jason. I love having you on this show. You and I have only met briefly, but I was fascinated by something that I heard you share about, and I’m excited about just what you’re going to share with our listeners today.
Jason
Yeah. Well, thanks so much for having me on. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. I know we got to talk just for a minute, but I was intrigued and I thought, can’t wait to do this.
Juli
Yeah, awesome. Well, you have recently written a book called Getting Past Your Past, which is a fantastic book. We’ll link to that so that people can check it out. But instead of doing like the flyover of all the content in that book, I want to zero in on one specific aspect. Having heard you speak on this, I was just fascinated by it. And it’s the aspect of secrets, of the secrets that we keep, why we keep secrets, why secrets are damaging and really what compels us to get to the place where we don’t keep secrets anymore. So let me first ask you, like, why even your interest in secrets?
Jason
Yeah, I mean, I think for me, I grew up and had abuse and trauma in my childhood. so secrets were a really big part of my life from an early age, both having and keeping. And so that was something that I was pretty intimately connected with although I really didn’t understand it much. And as I’ve grown in my career and working with people, it’s just become such a thread that I see over and over again. And so it’s led me to just be really interested in not only just secrets, but how they work in our life and how they work in our faith and relationships and all those types of things.
Juli
You referred to your own past to growing up. I remember way back in the days when I went through school, studying family systems and we learned about the fact that like most families have rules about secrets that actually are kind of implicitly taught that there are some secrets you should keep. Does that play into why we keep secrets as adults?
Jason
Yeah, I mean, I think secrets really exist at the place where we either don’t know or don’t want to talk about something.
Jason (03:42.84)
And so family systems, kind of surround that secret and they just say like, that’s beyond our ability to resolve our ability to communicate about that effectively. And so we just ought not talk about it. And I think as children, then we replicate those rules because again, we’re not asked to make rules as kids, we’re asked to keep rules. And so we say, well, if that’s how we address secrets, that’s how we address secrets.
Juli
And what would you say from your clinical experience are some of the most commonly held secrets?
Jason
Yeah, mean, think spanning the age range, mean, children often see here witness things that parents don’t necessarily know they see here witness. And so I think children sometimes keep secrets about behavior, about things that are dishonest and even sometimes about surprises or things that challenge how we would view a person. I think as adults, the people I work with, a lot of secrets have to do with things that cause people shame.
And sometimes those are things that the person has done or that have been done to them, but they tend to be rooted in shame.
Juli
And how common do you think it is? Like, I know you’ve even done some research on this. What percentage of us feel like we have secret that we can’t share with people?
Jason
Goodness. I mean, I think most. Yeah, I think most. And there’s some ranges there, you know, 60 to 80 percent. Some say 40. You know, the hard thing about researching secrets is they’re secrets. And so lots of people go, I don’t really want to share about that because that’s the nature of the secret. But I think for most all of us, we have a thing we hold back for whatever reason that we could probably call a secret.
Juli
Can you talk about the link between shame and secrets? Like why do those two things tend to go together?
Jason
Yeah, I think because when we feel ashamed about something or we feel shame or have that experience, it often gives us an opportunity to keep a secret because we have this moment where we just say to share that with somebody would be to share my shame and to be seen and to be witnessed. so rather than do that, I could just keep it a secret. And so I think they go hand in hand because the secret really the opportunity shows up for it alongside shame.
Juli (05:59.018)
I think for most of us in our experience, like a secret starts small. And the more we keep that secret, the harder it is to tell. Like I remember this is sort of a public example of this, but I heard probably 10 years ago about a coach who lied on his resume, like right when he got out of college. He couldn’t change his resume because that lies just started to follow him. So if he would have come clean about a little secret of where he worked when he was 18 or 20, it would have shown up along the way. And so finally he gets his dream job at the university he’s always wanted to coach for. And they do the background check and find out that he lied on his resume. But again, this was a decision he made probably as a young 20 that once he made that decision to keep a secret or a lie, like he couldn’t change it. How does that play out like in the secrets that we keep about shame, like an affair or pornography or abuse, where we make a decision probably at a young age without thinking through those consequences, but then we feel like we have to continue to keep that secret and it grows?
Jason
Yeah. That’s such a good question and a powerful story. There are many stories like that. I think what happens is we get so used to the secret and carrying that around and then it just gets bigger and we don’t look at it. The nature of secrets is they’re growing whether you’re looking at them or not. When you finally face it, it’s often bigger than you thought it was. But I think really to your point, they are seeds that are planted and they grow over time. And when you plant any kind of seed, it never seems like a big deal. You know, we planted lots of seeds in our garden every year and it’s not like we’re planting a carrot, we’re planting a very little seed. And so it seems very inconsequential to plant that seed. But at the end of the summer, there’s a harvest, right? And we harvest those things that have grown. And I think secrets are a lot like that, where in the moment, we’re planting these seemingly very small seeds nthat will be harvested at some time later.
Jason (08:09.602)
But the longer we wait to harvest them, the bigger they are.
Juli
Now, from what I understand, a lot of your ministry and your clinical practice is helping people when a big secret came out. Is that correct?
Jason
That’s correct.
Juli
Yeah. So can you talk about like just what that process is like? You have an individual who’s kept a secret for a long time. They think the secret’s going to destroy them and somehow it gets revealed or discovered, like just what is that like for that person?
Jason
Yeah, I mean, it feels like the end of the world because by the time they recognize the size of it, it’s too big. You know, by the time that they kind of think about that and they really recognize the damage that it might do, it’s it’s already out or it’s so big they say, I don’t even know what I would do with this. And so what happens is when I work with people, it’s because they’re disclosing it or it’s been discovered.
And so usually the disclosure of the secret comes under duress because people say, I’m now kind of backed into a corner and I have to talk about this thing or someone else has discovered it and I have to talk about this thing. And so what happens is people come to me and they have this secret that’s come out. And initially in the process, they’re, they’re just sure that this is the end of everything. But after we get to work together and really talk about the origin of it and what’s happened it’s actually freeing. And so it’s kind of an odd thing to explain to people that, you know, after we do the work, it’ll feel better. And no one ever believes that, right? They just say, ‘Jason, yeah, I love you, but I don’t believe that’. But it’s true because what we don’t talk about is the burden that it is to carry a secret. And that is an extra weight that we carry that sometimes we get so used to, we don’t even think about.
Juli
What are some examples of some of what those secrets might be?
Jason
Yeah, the ones that I hear lot and I mean, there are kind of the newsworthy ones, know, of infidelity or pornography use or moral failings, things like that. But also ones I hear a lot are trauma and abuse and things that have happened to people that they’re just really deeply ashamed to talk about or even monetary failures or things that they just know that would be really hurtful to someone, but they’re conflict avoidant. And so they’ve just never said.
Jason (10:26.818)
And so those things are usually tied to what people feel like is a deficiency in them. And so because of that, they keep it a secret because they feel like it confirms that. Yeah. So when people come to your office under that situation, like they’re really experiencing what a lot of us would say, like, is our greatest fear. Like in the words that you used, I’m going to lose everything or I have lost everything. And, you know, I think that’s a lot of what keeps us from being honest about what’s really happening or what we’ve done is we’re afraid of losing everything.
Juli
How do you get to the place where you have the courage to share a secret, to be transparent when you’re not forced to, when it could mean losing your job, your reputation, your marriage, the respect of your kids, like the kind of secrets you’re dealing with? Like they carry all those kinds of consequences.
Jason
Yeah, that is a, that’s a $10 million question. So great question. And that’s the work I’m trying to do is, is how do we deal with that before we have to? Because the thing is when we have to, there’s a lot of collateral damage and, we have to do cleanup before we do healing. And so the challenge is, that if someone has a secret, it’s discovered there’s collateral damage. The first step is to really take care of the damage before we even get to healing. And so it just delays the process. I think the thing that I tell people is that dealing with a secret before you have to means it’ll be easier than it would be the other way around, right? So the easiest time to deal with a secret is today. It’ll be harder tomorrow and harder the day after. And I think also you have to decide how much you wanna pursue health.
I’m very Midwestern all the way through. So if I even think about sunlight, I’m burned. Right? So I’m in front of a window now. I’m probably getting sunburned. And I called the dermatologist and I said, ‘Hey, you know, I probably should get screened for skin cancer or something, like, get sunburned sometimes’. And so I go to the dermatologist and I get in this little room and they just say, ‘Hey, like here’s, here’s your gown’. And I go, ‘You know, what’s, what’s that for? Are you going to wear that, or?’. They go, ‘No, you’re going to, you’re like, take off all your clothes and stand here. We’re to look at you’.
Jason (12:49.964)
And just instantly I’m ashamed. Right? I go, ‘I’ve been running. I guess I could have eaten a little better. You know, boy, I don’t, I would have worn different socks to these have a hole in them’. You know, I’m going through all these things because I have not had the experience of looking in the mirror and being seen that way. And so I’m going, oh, I don’t know. But I’m going to tell you that appointment, they found a cancerous mole that had to be removed that they would have never found had I not been vulnerable enough to do it.
And so I want to be really clear. This isn’t a story about finding someone to stand in your underwear with. That’s a totally different thing. But this is a story about there is power in being willing to find a trusted person who can help you and to tell them the truth about what’s holding you back. And sometimes it can even save your life.
Juli (13:43.854)
Hey friend, well because you’re listening to this episode it probably means that you feel like this teaching helps you with something. And I bet you have a friend who you’re thinking of right now who could benefit from Java with Juli. And if so, would you share it with them? I want to encourage you not to keep Java with Juli a secret. We want to let people know about it so that they can find a community and content that can help them grow in their relationship with the Lord and just dive into God’s perspective on some difficult topics. Thanks for spreading the word and for being part of letting us continue to bring this content to you. Alright, back to my conversation with Jason VanRuler.
Juli (14:29.198)
Do you need to reckon with what might be lost before you share a secret? Like, is it a good idea to say, wow, if I share this, I really might lose a relationship or I really might lose my job? Or do you just kind of like trust God with it and just move forward?
Jason
Yeah. I mean, what I always say is I’m a faith person, so I always say to be praying about it, you know, because I think that’s our safest place to disclose that and to have that initial conversation because God’s just going to love you anyway, God already knows. And so we’re not doing anything there that is not already made clear and aware. So I think that’s a good starting point. And then, yeah, I think you have to come to grips with there will be some things that come out of this and they might not be positive initially. You might lose a relationship, you might lose a job. And here’s what I’m going to argue. And again, sometimes it’s hard for people to believe, but the things you lose are usually the things like if you lose your job, it’s because the job was built on a thing that wasn’t for you anyway. And with those relationships, if you really hurt someone, have to face that you hurt them. And if you love them, it means taking responsibility. And so I think what we have to be careful of is, yes, there will be consequences. And sometimes people say, ‘Well, I just want to share it and not have consequences’. And I say, ‘Well, yeah, I mean, don’t we all?’ That sounds awesome. And that’s not how it works. And thankfully, that’s not how it works. So yeah, I think we have to be as honest as we can with ourselves about it and then recognize that a lot of times it’s better than we think. And the things that we lose aren’t the things we even thought we’d lose anyway.
Juli
So Jason, you’ve alluded a few times to in the long run, like this is going to be good. You’re going to feel free. What do you feel free from? How is it good? Can you flesh that out?
Jason
Yeah, I think it’s just so exhausting to put on a mask or to put on a front to people and to pretend to be one thing when you’re really another. And I think sometimes people who have secrets, they’ve never really been seen for who they are. And so they live a whole life kind of living small because they’re pretending to be someone else.
Jason (16:48.814)
And so it’s really the greatest opportunity we have to be seen, loved, and known as who we really are. But the cost is disclosure.
Juli
And we’re talking about some of these big secrets like trauma or a moral failure. I think for a lot of people, the secret can, it’s still heavy, but it can seem more innocuous. Like even to say, I have no clue what I’m doing. You know, like, I project sort of that imposter syndrome. I could project that I have it all together and really I’m scared to death. I’m going to lose my job if I make one mistake or some of those secrets that we never speak out loud, but we live with the fear of being discovered all the time. Do you see that a lot in your practice as well?
Jason
Well, I just, love the way you said that. That was poetic. That was great. And yes, and those secrets are sometimes the most heartbreaking ones I hear. Because like you said, there are things we all feel that we feel in community or we all experience, but we seemingly feel like we’re the only ones. And so those are the ones that are really painful when I hear someone’s kept a secret like that for a decade or two decades. And they tell me and they just say, ‘I know I’m the only one, Jason, that you’ve ever heard say this’. And I go, ‘Well, I am getting older and I have done this for a while. So yeah, I have heard that before’, but we just feel like it’s different. And so I think sometimes when people share those secrets, like I don’t have it all figured out, they do it in a whisper. You know, it’s like they can barely even get it out. But what they find on the other side of that is that they’re received and they’re loved and they’re probably not the only one.
Juli
Yeah. I think another reason sometimes people keep secrets is loyalties. So I don’t even know if maybe this played out in your own story, but particularly if you grew up in a family where there’s been dysfunction or abuse, it feels disloyal to disclose that, or there might be direct consequences to somebody in your family or somebody you care about. Or maybe you’ve even had somebody tell you, you know, if you really love me, you won’t tell anybody about this.
Juli (19:05.578)
How do you battle the conflicting desires of wanting to be free and transparent, but also wanting to be somebody who’s loyal?
Jason
Yeah. I mean, I think loyalty is really important. And I think especially as children, we want to be loyal to adults and our parents and people that we’re supposed to be loyal to. And so it can feel like we’re doing the wrong thing to say something. And what I usually tell clients is, you know, people who are healthy and want the best for you, don’t ask you to keep something that hurts you, that’s not in your best interest. And so that’s not to say they’re bad people, but it’s just to say, pursuing health looks like doing the things that make you healthy and dealing with the issues that are holding you back. And so it’s not disloyal. I think to do that is actually an act of courage. And then to invite the other person along with is courageous too, just to say like, this is something I don’t think that I should be living with anymore with this secret and I want to share it, but I want to invite you, the other person to come along.
Right? And you can share yours or you can talk about it too, but I want to live in the light and I think you deserve to as well.
Juli
And when we’re talking about disclosing secrets like that, we’re not necessarily talking about, I feel the freedom to put it on social media or, you know, tell my whole church. Like, that’s the other thing is how do you know what’s appropriate to share about a secret with whom and where you need to have that discernment?
Jason
Yeah, that’s a really good question. And definitely not on Instagram. I’m more of a TikTok person. So you can post it on. No, I’m giving you a hard time. What happens is sometimes we’re so tired of dealing with it that we just get to this place of reaction. And so to your point, we just go, I’m going to tell the first person I see or I’m going to post about it I’m going to. And all of these things, like I understand the intention behind it, but it doesn’t help us get to where we need to get to. And so one of the first things we need to do, and I always go back to praying about it and kind of rehearsing how I would talk about that. But then of thinking about, you know, who is someone trusted that has either been through this before or who knows how to get through this or who could point me towards a resource that I can trust with this and then talk to them about if they’re willing to hear it. And this is hard for people to do because a lot of times they want to just kind of rush in and say the thing and then kind of word vomit and back out.
Jason (21:29.462)
And I just say, well, not so fast.
Juli
If we’re gonna do this well, it needs to be relational and we need to find a safe person to do that with. And how do you know somebody safe?
Jason
Yeah, that’s a great question. Especially, I mean, sometimes people say, well, I’ve never known anyone who’s safe. And so I would just say safe people, just a couple attributes are, they’re people that are for you and for your health. They’re people who can tell you hard things. They’re people that share the things that are valuable to them or valuable to you. So like if you’re a faith person, they’re a faith person and they’re people who are willing and able. Sometimes we pick able people, but they’re not willing. And so we run into a lot of trouble with that. So we want willing and able people and then people who are willing to tell you the truth. And so when we find somebody like that, they might not have all the answers. They might not have any answers, but they might be willing to walk with us through it or point us in a direction to get some help that we need.
And often that might be a counselor or a mentor or just a trusted kind of friend.
Juli
Yeah. When do you feel like like in your own journey? How did you find that safe person or safe community?
Jason
Well, I just made a lot of mistakes. So I just did it the wrong way a lot of times and refined as I went. I, you know, I sort of just was like, well, I’ll tell you and I’ll tell you and I’ll tell you. And and what really happened over time is I just recognized you know, some of the struggle with if we share a secret about something that’s been really hard for us to someone who it’s inappropriate to share it with, the chances are they don’t know what to do with it. And that might even be traumatizing to them. And so what I kind of learned is time and place in person. And so we have to kind of work through how to identify that. And for me, what that looked like is finding a therapist and saying, hey, you know, this is what happened. I don’t know what to do with it. And they said, OK, well, let’s point you to this person and, and that was the start, not the end of my journey, but I knew in that place I could trust that that person was going to help. And sharing a secret with a therapist can then help you know and have the discernment of who do I need to share this with next and what pieces and like they help you sort that through and kind of get that discernment of when you need to have a confrontation and you know where you need to have boundaries and things like that.
Juli (23:52.502)
So, I don’t know if you experienced that in your own journey, but I’m sure you work with people on that. Who needs to know what and what does that look like?
Jason
Well, and that’s really important. And so the hope is that a therapist can help you work through that because the goal is the therapist doesn’t have an agenda about that. So they say, well, let’s just objectively look at some of these things. Whereas sometimes we tell somebody really close to us or somebody who even has really good intentions and wants to advocate for us.
They can point us to some people and directions that aren’t always very helpful because they’ve got an agenda about it. And so we want to try to find somebody who is just trying to look out for what is the best decision and discernment in this moment about what to do next.
Juli
Sometimes people don’t want to share a secret. And this is kind of what they’ll say is, I don’t want to hurt the people I love. So a good example of this might be you had an affair 10 years ago.
Your spouse doesn’t know about it. It’s over. Do they really need to know about it? If you tell them about it, it’s going to just cause a lot of pain and disruption. Your marriage is in a good place now. What is your counsel on that kind of situation?
Jason
Boy, isn’t that a tough one? mean, that’s one of those things that I think there’s a lot of moving parts, but usually what I say to someone is, if you say in marriage, if you’re in marriage and you want to be truly and fully known by your spouse and you want them to do the same, is that what’s happening? And you say, well, no. And so do they not get the ability to decide what to do with what you’ve done? And that’s really, really hard. And to your point, there’s definitely arguments people make about if you just said nothing, just say nothing and that’ll be better for everyone.
And maybe that argument is a good one sometimes, but I think most of the time, if it’s something around like infidelity or pornography or some things like that, what happens if we don’t share the secret is we actually lack some of the accountability that protects us from doing it again. So if we’ve had an affair 10 years ago, things are good now, but nobody knows, there’s not really a protective layer to make sure we don’t do that again.
Jason (26:08.672)
And so what I see sometimes is people say, well, I’m not going to share because it’s in the interest of what’s best for them. But then they fall right back into the same place because there’s no accountability around their struggle.
Juli
Yeah. Yeah, boy. Yeah. And I would also think like you’re healing and redemption can’t be complete, you know, because like you’re saying you’re not fully known for who you are. You’re fully known for the pieces you want the other person to see. So, yeah. So I could see that.
Jason
Yeah, and think it’ll always come out in the light. It’s gonna show up at some point. It’s just, I think, unrealistic to believe otherwise. And so while, you know, I’ve got a good friend that says, you know, the worst thing about a secret is not living with it, but it’s dying with it. And what a burden that is. And I just agree with that. You know, I don’t call that success to keep a secret your whole life from the person you love the most.
Juli
Jason, you have a unique position of being in the trenches with people that have had a very public secret exposed. You know, we’re kind of on the other side of the secret sometimes of reading the blog or hearing about the headline, maybe even at a personal level experiencing a fall of a ministry, you know, a church split. I’d love your insight just on what we need to know on this side of a secret.
Juli
I think when that sort of thing happens, we just want to write off the person as a horrible, awful person, a villain. They’ve maybe heard the name of Christ, they’ve betrayed us, and we never want to hear from them again. But that’s not consistent with what God calls us to in the scripture. But I think we wrestle with that, especially when secrets are so public. What counsel and perspective would you have for just the church towards the people that maybe have let us down or had a secret exposed?
Jason
Yeah, that’s so difficult. And I think, you know, first and foremost, yes to everything you said. That is a pretty common experience if you’re on the other side of it is to feel exactly that way. And so what I would typically say is, yes, you’re allowed to feel, think, believe all of that, AND.
Jason (28:30.796)
And it’s the ‘and’ that always gets us in trouble, right? The ‘and’ is it could be us and maybe it has been us. And if we’re faith people, our faith tells us something different than the things we want to believe. And so I think what’s really hard about the other side of a moral failure when a seeker comes out is that the people who have experienced the fallout from that are tasked with holding on to both.
And that’s a really difficult place to be, to both be disgusted or upset with someone or even disrespect what they’re doing and also to try to follow their faith in those moments and to love and have grace. And so I think what we want to try to do is to hang on to both and to just say, it’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be hurt. We need to work through that. And also what about grace and compassion in our humanity?
That doesn’t let somebody off the hook. That doesn’t say they shouldn’t have consequences, but it’s just to say healing requires both.
Juli
And I feel like we have a lot of examples of the side of being angry and, you know, like hashing out how we feel. We don’t have really any discipleship on the other hand of it. Like, what does it look like to have grace and compassion, especially when you don’t have upfront contact with an individual. Let’s say there has been a moral failure and you’ve been impacted by it. You don’t have the chance to look at that person, you know, face to face and hear their story. How do we, how do we close that gap?
Jason
Yeah, I mean, it’s, I think, I think for us, if we don’t know the person well enough to talk to them directly, we just have to hold space for we have heard what we’ve heard, we know what we know, and there’s always more to it. There’s always a story there and it’s probably bigger and more deep than the one we’ve heard. And to live in that space is saying, well, I don’t understand the whole thing, but of what I’ve heard or understood, I’m upset or disgusted by it, but I know there’s more. So I think it’s kind of sitting in that place. And then to your point, I don’t think there’s a lot of great examples of restoration and healing that we see in media or in ministry a lot of times where someone can do the wrong thing and find a path to redemption.
Jason (30:44.458)
And probably a lot of times that path to redemption is not to end up where they started, but just we don’t even see that process walked out in a way that we can feel like something is happening.
Juli
Yeah. And does it happen? I mean, does it happen behind the scenes or just by and large the person sort of goes off into the sunset?
Jason
Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, more of that than not, I have dedicated a lot of time to approaching ministry and places where someone has had a failing and saying, can we come up with a plan to help this person walk through the things they need to walk through to personal healing and organizational healing? And I’m always really clear that that doesn’t mean reinstatement a lot of times, right? It means there’s a lot of consequences and things, but I just, feel like we have to show people how to do that or at least give them the opportunity because it’s easy to point out the bad. It’s easy to watch someone fall. It’s hard to walk through that with them to get better. But I think people need that because a lot of the reason people don’t share secrets is because if they’re just sort of kicked out into the sunset, it seems hard to make that decision to do that.
Juli
Right. Yeah, I remember reading one author who described, like in modern terms, David, and like described him as a pastor and his moral failure and what he did to cover it up. And like you’re reading it like it’s this salacious headline and then you realize it was David, you know? And then you realize like he’s still called a man after God’s own heart. He’s forgiven, he’s reinstated. Like that just we don’t have space for that in modern church today. It’s like once you’re in leadership, if you have any sort of failure, it’s like a one and done. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with that tension. And I agree with you that having that pressure and knowing that that’s the situation, probably keeps people in leadership from sharing secrets when they’re more manageable.
Jason (32:58.222)
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s how it grows, you know? And so it’s kind of like if we’re not careful, we get really good at acknowledging our hurt, but not healing. Right. So we’re like, we can talk about a hurt all day, but we’re not quite sure how to talk about healing. And so I think the challenge is we just we need to see that happen more often and to really see that done well. And I think also just recognizing not everybody wants to heal. So I think the opportunity needs to be given with the recognition that you know, some people who have a moral failure, they’re not interested in getting healthy. And that’s their decision. But I would just love to approach it from the standpoint of, we give them the chance to decide?
Juli
I guess, like from your experience, as you look at individuals who have kept a secret for a long time, have had a moral failure, what are the dynamics that tend to be at play that lead to that?
Jason
Yeah, they’re very well insulated. You know, so I think if you move up in ministry or you move up in leadership, people actually give you less feedback and ask less questions. And that’s not a good thing. And so what happens is sometimes people find themselves in a role where they’re just beyond being questioned. And in that place, we don’t show up as our best self. You know, it’s sort of like if we had unlimited money, would we make wise decisions about what to purchase? Probably not.
Right? So if we have unlimited discretion to make decisions and zero accountability, we do. And we protect this image. And so I think, I think what I see is it’s about image, it’s about ego, it’s about not being asked hard questions or unwilling to have hard conversations. It’s about a workplace culture that doesn’t support people being honest and open about things like that. Those would be some of the things. And then I think too, sometimes people protect that just because they have such a sense of guilt and shame. And it’s really interesting because I’ll see organizations where there’s even kind of a culture of guilt and shame. And so one person will fall and they’ll be surrounded by others that kept secrets too. And so sometimes we don’t talk about secrets because we have our own. And so it’s really hard for me to ask you to be accountable if I’m unwilling to be accountable as well.
Juli (35:16.084)
If you’re reverse engineering that, and you’re asked to come into a leadership team or a church structure, what are some of the things that you would put into place to prevent that from happening?
Jason
Yeah, we definitely need to be having the right conversations. And so what happens a lot of times, I think people are taught a framework and a framework is great, but it’s not tailored to the person. And so what I’ll often ask someone, ‘Are you actively keeping a secret?’ And I’ll say, ‘I might not have earned the right to hear the secret yet, but I’m just curious, are you actively keeping a secret? And if not, what are you likely to keep a secret about? And are you talking to someone about that?’ And if the answer is no, we need to find someone to talk to about that. So for instance, someone might say, ‘No, I’m not actively keeping a secret, but if I were to keep a secret, it’d probably be about my spending because I spend too much sometimes and I’m kind of embarrassed and I hide that’.
And so I go, ‘Great, tell somebody about that. Have conversations about the temptation so that we can prevent you from going down that path’.
Juli
Jason, I believe you’re also a dad, is that right?
Jason
That’s correct. Yeah.
Juli
So how are you doing this as a parent? Like, how are you teaching your kids or creating a family environment where they’re learning at a young age not to keep secrets?
Jason
Yeah, so the thing that we talk about my family and by no means am I probably doing it perfectly. I’m trying, but what we talk about is make it easy for someone to tell the truth. And so I’m trying to make it easy for my kids to tell me the truth. And so what that means is if they disclose a thing that they’re tempted to keep back, my job is to hear that with grace and kindness and truth.
And so sometimes that’s hard, right? Sometimes you want to react or you want to judge it or you want to say, well, what are you doing or what were you thinking? And but if I’m committed to making it easy for people to tell me the truth, I have to show up in that space as a person that’s safe for them to tell those things to.
Juli
Can you give me an example of how that’s played out? my goodness. Let’s see.
Jason
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the first ones was just it was just even like a simple thing about I remember somebody broke something in the house.
Jason (37:33.504)
And so everyone was like, who broke the thing? And nobody broke the thing. It was a ghost that broke the thing or it was something. And so then my son approached me and he just said, dad, you know, the thing that got broken. And, you know, I already know what he’s going to say, right? I’m not, I’m like, yep, I totally know you broke it. Kind of what I thought. But what I had to do in that moment is just say, mm hmm, yeah, yeah, I know the thing that broke. And he says, you know, and he kind of got really introspective and it was really hard for him. And he says, you know, I actually broke it and I hit it and I’m sorry. And in that moment, you know, doing the work I do, I hear a lot of secrets disclosed. So this is pretty small on the scale, you know? So part of me is like, that’s not a big deal. But what I wanted to do is just to show up in a way that was just really loving and kind. And I just said, like, I totally get that. And I’m aware that you did that. And so we got to talk about what to do next and kind of what can the plan be and how do we work through it together? And so I think what that did is it really demonstrated that it’s okay to tell me hard things. I might not like the thing, I might disagree with it, there might be some things we’ve got to work through as a result, but what I want to do with my kids is show up as a person that’s safe to tell things to.
Juli
Yeah, and that’s great that your kids can learn that at young age.
Jason
Yeah, suspect it’ll get more difficult the older they get. I suspect that we’re pretty entry level on secrets so far.
Juli
Do you have teenagers yet?
Jason
I just, yeah. I’ve got a 14, 11, and a nine.
Juli
All right. OK, so 14, you’re starting to get there. Yeah. Yeah. I think we will get more challenging secrets than breaking things eventually.
Jason
Yeah.
Juli
All right. So I want to end with just maybe a big question. Is there any secret that’s unredeemable? Like if there’s somebody listening, like is there any secret that you’ve just been like, yeah, like it’s over if people find this out?
Jason
You know, I’ll tell you what I have. I’ve worked with a lot of different people. I’ve had a really varied history. I worked in the prison system. I worked at psychiatric hospitals. I heard a lot of secrets, heard a lot of things. And I would just say, no, there isn’t because you know, my faith tells me that there’s nothing that can’t be redeemed.
Jason (39:52.622)
And so if it matters, I mean, I would just say the reason I’m sitting here today is because I chose to share a secret and it hurt me for the better part of two decades before I finally decided to. But everything got better after not immediately. Right. It wasn’t like I just said it and then everything was great. But what happened is it allowed me to deal with the reality that I was living in and to deal with it differently.
And so I would just say if someone’s listening to this, definitely anything can be redeemed and you’re worth it. Because the chances are if you’re keeping a secret, you’re living smaller than you need to.
