How restful repentance is.How hard it is to carry around a list of character flaws you have toe excuse, to rationalize, to skirt around.

How hard it is to be your own Big Brother.  How hard it is to be always revising history and cropping the photographs of your mind.  How hard it is to have a list of talking points that you always have to insert into dangerous conversations.  Sin makes us all into Baghdad Bob.  Sine  makes us liars to ourselves.

But then we repent.  We can then say, “I did wrong” and mean it.

We can say it without truculence.  We can say it without feigning indifference.  We can say it without the tactical goal of forestalling criticism.

We can say it in peace.

The penitent life is the only authentic life.

(See the comments here).