By Kat Silverglate, Founder Copyright 2022

I didn’t know why they invited me to coffee; but it didn’t matter. I loved these people. We met doing volunteer lawyer stuff and had been doing committee work together for a while now. We’d grown fond of each other. Trusted each other. The mutual respect was strong for sure. Of the two, he… he was more senior. An overseer. She… she was more behind the scenes in the nuts and bolts of the work we were all very passionate about. So no, the call to get together for coffee while I was in town didn’t set off any alarms or send up warning flags.

On arrival, we traded warm hugs and I ran ahead to find a spot to catch up. I plopped in my seat; but they, rather than sit in a circle around the small table, they pulled their chairs kinda together across from me. It felt a bit strange, but “OK,” I thought. “Whatever.” When they started with some awkward small talk, I knew something was up, but I couldn’t imagine what. Finally I blurted out, “OK, what’s up? Something is happening here other than coffee. Right?” They both got a grieved look on their faces and nodded. Whatever this was, it was going to pain them to tell me. I braced myself waiting for the shoe to drop.

I don’t remember the exact words, but the conversation went something like this:

He started: “Yes, something is up. But before we discuss it, we want you to know that we respect and admire you and we are thrilled with the work the committee is doing under your leadership.” Oh my goodness. This was not going to be good. My stomach started to do somersaults. Then he leaned in and looked at me in the eyes and laid it out.

“Someone was upset by a comment you made during your presentation the other day.” He was direct and clear and repeated what he heard I had said giving me a chance agree or disagree. As soon as the words came out, I felt my face flush and heard a flood defensive words coming out of my mouth -- almost like it was someone else speaking

“It was a joke. I didn’t mean anything by it. You guys know my heart.”

I was in the middle of the fight or flight reaction to confrontation. Fighting my heart out. I had made a sarcastic comment about another program. Since I’m not usually one for sarcasm, the whole thing was out of character for me. Someone who was intimately involved in that project had called him. I felt horrible and embarrassed. Fighting was futile. And I knew it. They were 100% right.

I felt my head drop in shame as the flight reaction started to move in where the fight was leaving. “Maybe I’m not the one for this role?” She could feel my regret and reached for my arm to comfort me. His tone got super soft.

“Slow down now. That’s not true. Nobody’s asking you to step down. You shouldn’t have said it. Now you need to go and make it right.”

When I looked up, he was looking at me like my dad would when he wanted me to understand a hard lesson. For a few short moments, he was the best fatherly mentor a girl could ask for assuring me that if I was going to lead, I was bound to mess up. My life as a leader wasn’t ever going to be summed up by my most recent mistake. If I was gonna keep walking this mile, I’d need to get really good at asking for forgiveness when I stumbled.

They spoke hard truth to me that day. But their words didn’t leave me with a gaping wound or feeling defeated. They left me feeling grateful and cared for and more, they left me feeling empowered do the next right thing. That’s what truthful words spoken with deep love do – they build up. They don’t tear down.

The wisdom behind speaking truth with love is easy enough to grasp. Literature and theology are filled with phrases that make our heads bob up and down when we hear them. I love the way Warren Wiersbe sums it up. It’s short but resonates deeply.

Truth without love is brutality and love without truth is hypocrisy.

Warren Wiersbe

It so simple and I’d imagine it takes most of us to a moment where brutal truth crushed us or the opposite -- some syrupy mushy statement comes out of someone’s mouth and you and everyone who hears it knows that it contradicts the elephant in the room.   

Another theologian, Tim Keller tackles the topic by adding some of the reasons that support the brutality/hypocricy conclusion. He substitutes harshness and sentimentity for Wiersby’s harsher words, brutality and hypocracy. Here’s how he says it.  

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about out flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.

Tim Keller

What good is truthful information if you can’t hear it? Or worse, affirmation of our flaws? Who want’s that? And while I love Tim Keller’s treatment of it, it’s Emerson -- Ralph Waldo Emerson -- who takes us to a pretty holy place with truth and love. He tells us that loveless delivery will drown out the truest truth almost every time. Here’s his take on it.  

What you are stands over you… and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The love passage in Corinthians brings the idea the rest of the way home. The one that people read at weddings. The one that we can quote even if we aren’t bible readers. The one that includes love is kind. That one. That passage actually has a huge predicate that mirrors Emerson's idea. It’s 1 Cor. 13:1 and it starts:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

1 Cor. 13:1

In short, I can’t hear you because your lovelessness has drown out your words. Love and truth are a package deal.  They’re not intended to be sold separately. If the truth/love package came with a label, it would appear in the most obnoxious neon orange color with the UPC code – DO NOT SEPARATE. Which sounds easy until you try to live it consistently day in and day out.

So, here’s our mission this month. We are going to focus on the spiritual practice of speaking truth with love by deliberately speaking truth with love for the next 30 days. Not just hard truth, all truth. In your mission pack, you’ll find two flags. The blue one represents truth and the pink one represents love. You’re also going to find four obnoxious neon orange stickers that say the same thing. THIS IS A SET – DO NOT SEPARATE. If you don’t have a mission pack and you’d like to participate, no worries. We’ll get one to you right away. Just click the “request materials” button on this page.

Start by taking one of those stickers and join the two flags at the top. It will remind you to join truth with love all the time.  Put it somewhere you can see it. In your car, in your bathroom, on the refrigerator, by your computer. Somewhere you can be reminded that this is the spiritual practice that we are going to focus on.

With the remaining three stickers, use them to record the times during the month of August when you found this practice challenging. Write it down. Maybe ask a few honest questions: did you pause when you found yourself challenged in this area? When you felt the urge to say something but had anything but love in your heart? In your motives? Did you pray before you spoke? About whether to speak? About what to speak? Let the experience grow you.

And remember, if you’d like to share your truth/love story, you can visit our donation page and hit “donate story.”