My three-year-old sings, whispers, and mumbles secrets in my ear every night before bed.
She grabs my shoulder and says, “Mama, I have a secret for you!”
I expect this but I act surprised. “Really?! What is it?”
And then she tells me the secrets of a preschooler, complete with wishes that can never come true and descriptions and details of things only viewable from three feet above the ground.
I won’t tell you exactly what she says because if I do, my daughter’s secrets will lose their power.
As soon as I speak them in the light, they lose their mystique.
But the same is true for those other types of secrets. You know what I’m talking about. The ones that need to be, should be, must be shared. Sin in secret has power. But shared and confessed in the light, it loses it’s hold. When my daughter is scared in the night and what she thinks is hiding in the dark corner of her room, I simply switch on the light. Nothing looks the same in the morning.
Even things like laziness, overindulgence, and bitterness seem to lose traction when we begin to share with someone we trust.
A best friend.
Our spouse.
A sister.
I don’t have any secrets anymore. As soon as I begin to tell my story, no one else can beat me to it. “Did you hear what she DID to her husband?” holds no power any longer because I’ve already spoken it. The gossip doesn’t mean anything anymore because I’ve said it first.
So I suggest that you have something to confess, big or small, that you consider what it is doing to you by hiding it.
It is draining you.
It is holding you captive.
I know it feels better in the dark, somehow safer. But that is just a lie. Kept in the dark, it is haunting you and keeping you inside it’s cage.
If you can, share it. If you are brave enough, speak it. It will kill you if you don’t.
(I understand that everyone’s situation is different. Sharing secrets of a particular nature should be done with intention to heal relationship, not merely to assuage personal guilt. If you choose to confess, please share with much thought and prayer.)
