But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.  John 3:21

 I ran into a friend yesterday who has not seen me since the early days of when my world turned upside down.  In fact, while my world first started to unwrap, the two of us had a couple of heart-to-heart conversations. During these vulnerable moments, we allowed the pierce of truth to cut open that yucky stuff inside the hollow of our hearts, deeply embedded like pulp in a cantaloupe.

Ironically, the yuckiness that we are so resistant to share and, instead, try to hide and drown in things like a gallon of pistachio ice cream, turns to unhealthy mold if we keep it buried in the dark. When we open ourselves up, we turn the light switch on our secrets and hurts.  Light is vital for our existence from illuminating our physical worlds to providing a sense of wellbeing to our mental states. Without light from the sun, plants would die and our food supply, short changed. Metaphorically speaking, I think, generally, people who are masters at hiding major parts of their lives, whether they are in a crisis or not, are not spared the consequences of darkness.

I do believe that sometimes by constricting our deepest and darkest secrets, they manifest instead as physical ailments, such as stomachs and headache.  We are like rugs that need to be shaken out regularly to avoid being embedded with difficult to remove grime and dust! We were not created as untouchable, unemotional beings; to live a life void of connectivity is a life in solitary confinement.  This said, we have to have a little faith that whomever we “expose” ourselves to will provide a listening ear, understand, not judge and certainly continue to love us—yuckiness and all!

Of course, this is where it gets tough. Typically, as social beings, we want to attract people—not turn them off! No one ever said having faith was easy. For me, fortunately, the friend who I saw yesterday was there during one of my darkest moments. She had allowed me to not only shed every bit of dirty lint with her that I needed to at the time, but as it turned out, she related fully since she too suffered from similar circumstances in her younger years! Isn’t God good? I mean, what’s the likelihood of that? Trust me, even though you might think that a person’s outsides look so different from yours, you’d be surprised how his or her insides duplicate yours! I have found that most people, no matter how “put together” they seem, cannot escape this life without experiencing some sort of brokenness at some time in their lives.

As I shared my innermost feelings and secrets to this friend, and she with me, we connected through our own human element and then we were better able to move forward…as least until the next round of curve balls that life would likely unleash. Fact is, if we take and risk and dare to share our secrets and vulnerabilities, I have found that the process not only bonds us with others, but also connects us to ourselves. Risking our inner selves with others reaffirms and reminds us that we are human and we are as good as good gets.  The icing on the cake is although my friend and I are very busy, and we do not see each other as often as we would like, our common yuckiness that we shared so long ago will always form a fine (as in deliciously fine!) bond between us. This alone reminds me that I do not travel what can at times appear to be a solitary journal—unless I decide to not pick up any passengers for the ride, which can make for an awful lonesome ride.

Until next time….Faith forward!