Lent 2026 – Day 16: The Lies We Tell Ourselves and Girl Math

I learned about girl math today.

I find it both mind-boggling, ridiculous, and honestly kind of brilliant. The logic behind it is actually pretty structured. It makes sense… inside girl world.

For the sake of this reflection we’re going to drop the political correctness and the disclaimers about sweeping generalizations. I know all of that. I spent over a decade teaching people about things like the pyramid of hate and how stereotypes work. This is a Lenten post, not a DEI TED Talk.

Think of this as suspension of disbelief.

Jesus liked teaching through parables. This is one.

Girl math basically works like this: if you return something, use store credit, or shift money from one place to another, then technically the new thing you bought is free. And cash is not real, so whatever you buy with it is technically free. 🤷‍♂️

It’s borrowing from Paul to pay Peter.

Everyone involved knows the math isn’t real. But it feels real enough to justify the decision.

And that got me thinking about something much bigger.

Humans do this kind of math with their lives all the time.

We tell ourselves stories that are just close enough to the truth to make us comfortable.

Racism can’t really be happening because I’m not a racist.

Systemic oppression must not exist because it hasn’t personally affected me.

The people in charge can’t really be incompetent because we elected them.

If things are working for me, then the system must be working.

That’s not truth.

That’s moral girl math.

It reminded me of a quote from John Steinbeck in East of Eden:

“Cathy's lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or responsibility… She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure.”

Cathy didn’t tell obvious lies. She stayed close enough to the truth that people couldn’t quite prove she was lying.

That’s the most effective kind of lie there is.

Not completely false.

Just comfortable enough to the truth to believe.

Steinbeck’s novel is built around the story of Cain and Abel. The idea that people are not born purely good or purely evil. They are constantly choosing. And jealousy has been twisting that choice since the beginning.

I heard a TikTok creator say something recently that stuck with me.

She said, “Run as fast as you can from people who are jealous or envious of you, because they will unalive you.” She didn’t necessarily mean that literally. She did and she didn’t. What she meant was that people who envy you will eventually try to knock you down. Because your existence forces them to confront something uncomfortable about themselves. And people really hate that.

Jealousy and envy is the oldest human problems there are.

It’s the entire story of Cain and Abel. One brother looks at the other and instead of asking how he can grow or change, he decides the easier solution is to destroy what he envies.

Envy twists the truth.

It tells us stories about why someone else’s success must be illegitimate, or why their happiness must not be real. It convinces us that if we knock someone down a notch, the world will somehow feel fair again.

We lie because the truth is ugly. The lie makes things beautiful.

And if we’re honest, sometimes the person we lie to most is ourselves.

I once dated a woman who used to say things like, “Why does everyone want to hang out with you and not me? We have the same group of friends.” At the time I remember thinking, because I’m more fun than you.

Which in hindsight was probably the first clue that something wasn’t working.

She would also say, “Babies, why don’t you do the things you do with your friends with me?” And I remember telling her, “You’re my girlfriend. You get girlfriend privileges my friends don’t get. Do you want to be my friend or my girlfriend?”

But that relationship had a pattern. About once a month she would break up with me. And somehow, every time, I was the problem.

When you hear something often enough, you start to believe it.

Years later she said something to me that confirmed what my therapist already told me.

“I didn’t know how to be in a healthy relationship, Vangie. And you were healthy.” Until I wasn’t. Because when someone keeps telling you that you’re the problem, eventually you start to question your own sanity.

Looking back now, the lie wasn’t just hers. The lie was the story I told myself to make the relationship make sense.

I was in love with her, so she couldn’t possibly be a horrible person.

Because if she was a horrible person and I loved her… what would that say about me?

So instead of accepting the truth, I kept adjusting the story until it felt less ugly.

My best friend Kimi Serrano says the most dangerous sentence that ever comes out of my mouth is, “I can make it work.” She hears that and immediately knows disaster is probably right around the corner.

We do that a lot.

We romanticize what broke us. We glorify intensity and call it passion. We confuse chaos with chemistry and co-dependency with love.

Sometimes we aren’t grieving the person.

We’re grieving the idea of them.

The potential we thought was there.

But romanticizing an unhealthy relationship doesn’t make it love.

And letting someone have access to your body when they don’t care for your heart is a lie we sometimes tell ourselves just to avoid being alone.

Buddhist philosophy teaches that suffering begins when we refuse to see reality clearly. We cling to the stories we want instead of the truth that’s right in front of us.

Which brings us back to Lent.

Lent isn’t about smoothing the hard edges of life.

It’s about looking directly at the uncomfortable truths we’ve been avoiding. The lies we tell ourselves to make things feel less painful.

Because the moment we stop lying to ourselves is usually the moment things can finally start to change.

Girl math might help you justify a new pair of shoes you don’t need. But it won’t help you understand yourself.

Eventually you have to stop adjusting the formula just to make the answer feel better. You have to look at the numbers honestly.

Jesus told parables because people are very good at hearing a story and recognizing everyone else in it.

Lent asks us to do something harder.

To recognize ourselves.

To look at the stories we’ve been telling about our lives and ask whether they’re actually true.

Not the comfortable pretty lie.

The honest ugly truth.

That’s the lesson.

And that’s the work.

Lenten Reflection

“Nothing is concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.” ― Luke 12:2–3

Lent has never been about pretending we’re perfect people.

It’s about honesty.

Jesus warns that the things we hide eventually come into the light. Most of the time we assume that means secrets we keep from others.

But the harder truth is that the things we hide from ourselves eventually come to the surface too.

The stories we tell ourselves to justify staying somewhere we shouldn’t.

The explanations we invent to make unhealthy situations feel normal.

The moral math we use so we don’t have to face uncomfortable truths about our lives.

Truth has a way of surfacing whether we’re ready for it or not.

Lent invites us to do something different.

Instead of waiting for the truth to expose itself, we choose to face it willingly.

Not to punish ourselves.

But because truth, even when it’s uncomfortable, is the first step towards freedom.

Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.

#lentreflections2026 #girlmath #timshel #40days40nights