Monica Lewinsky: “I’m determined to have a different end to my story”

She’s telling her story for the first time, and evidently trying to move on with her life.

Whatever one may think of her and the president who made her name an international punchline, there’s a lot here for a Christian to ponder during this season of resurrection, renewal, mercy and growth. How many of us are, like Monica Lewinsky, spending our lives seeking to write “a different end to my story” and “give a purpose to my past”?  More than a salacious soap opera, it seems to me Lewinsky’s story is about our all-too-human propensity for weakness, stupidity, ignorance and sin—and the need we all have to grow up and move on.

From the Vanity Fair release:

Monica Lewinsky writes in Vanity Fair for the first time about her affair with President Clinton: “It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress.” She also says: “I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton. Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened.”

After 10 years of virtual silence (“So silent, in fact,” she writes, “that the buzz in some circles has been that the Clintons must have paid me off; why else would I have refrained from speaking out? I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth”), Lewinsky, 40, says it is time to stop “tiptoeing around my past—and other people’s futures. I am determined to have a different ending to my story. I’ve decided, finally, to stick my head above the parapet so that I can take back my narrative and give a purpose to my past. (What this will cost me, I will soon find out.)”