I Didn't Tell My Mom the Whole Truth — And Proverbs 4:23 Called Me Out

My mom was generous with me recently. And I didn’t tell her the whole truth about what it was for.

I knew what I was doing. I knew as it was happening. I gave her enough — just enough — to explain the situation without giving her the part that felt embarrassing. The part I didn’t want her to see. The part I was afraid she might judge.

And then I sat with that.

Proverbs 4:23 says: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”

I’ve always read this as protection. Guard your heart from outside things coming in — from toxic people, negative influences, content that pulls you away from God. That’s part of it. But this morning it hit me differently.

What if guarding your heart also means being honest about what you’re carrying inside it?

Because what I’m carrying right now — the embarrassment, the fear of being judged by someone who loves me — that’s sitting in my heart. And Proverbs says everything I do flows from it. Which means if I don’t deal with it, it’s going to keep flowing. Into my relationships. Into my choices. Into the way I show up.

I worked through it this way: I imagined a box in front of me. What goes in the box today? What am I asking God to take and work on?

The list got real fast.

That situation with my mom. Any fear I’ve been carrying. Trust issues I haven’t fully named. The moments where I’ve been petty. The places where I’ve been impatient.

And what I realized is that this is what guarding your heart actually looks like in practice. It’s not a defensive wall. It’s an active, regular practice of bringing what’s inside out to God. Saying: here it is. All of it. I don’t want to carry this. I want your hands on it.

I want the boldness to go back to my mom and tell her the whole thing. Not because the full truth is comfortable — it isn’t. But because I don’t want to build relationships on partial honesty. I don’t want what I’m embarrassed about to have more power than what I know to be true about grace.

The fear of judgment is real. But it’s not stronger than God.

So today, I’m guarding my heart by being honest about what’s in it. Putting the fear, the pettiness, the impatience, and the embarrassment in the box — not to suppress them but to hand them over. To say to God: I see these in me. I don’t want them running the show. Change what needs changing.

In Jesus’s name. Amen and done.

Peace, Love and Joy always — Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com