What are you trying to bury?

“God is light; in him there is no darkness at all… If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus… purifies us from all sin.” John 1:5-7

hand in darkess, with light shining on it

Part of being human is a tendency to hide.  We bury things we don’t want others to see or even things we don’t want to face ourselves in order to avoid pain.  We fear that we can’t tolerate the emotional pain of what we might experience should we look at the wound. Many things can be buried within, shame, trauma, sin or even things about ourselves we fear would be rejected or ridiculed if people knew.  

In psychology we have all kinds of terms for this, suppression of emotion, denial,  stuffing of feelings. And these coping mechanisms often come with many consequences, loneliness, isolation, anxiety, depression, addictions, to name a few.

beachball on surface of water

I often use the analogy of someone holding a beach ball below the surface of the water. From the surface of the water- What other people see or what we allow ourselves to be aware of) there is nothing to see. But below the surface there is so much energy being expended keeping things hidden, buried, unexposed.  Things may look ok on the surface, but what is hidden is hindering and remains unhealed.  Releasing and bringing to the surface what we don’t want to see, might expose us to discomfort or pain but what ususally also happens is a freedom and lightness and often the things we fear the most don’t carry the weight we thought they would.  In many cases people often find that when they bring what’s hidden to God and trusted others there is not the condemnation and judgement they feared but rather support and help. They also usually find that the emotions while painful can began to move through them and be processed rather than suppressed and held deep inside causing a pain and heaviness and debilitating consequences.  

When Adam and Eve sinned the first thing they did was hide for fear of judgement.  For sure there were deep consenquences that impact us all to this day, but God did not abandon them, nor did he destroy them. He covered them and gave them a mandate to go forth and live and work and have children, not without difficulty but with hope.  

 When we bury things and refuse to deal with them, the power of these shadows and secrets grow and gain control over our lives. Living in the light means bringing the things we bury to God for healing and for restoration. That is not saying it is easy but He promises to be with us. He will, if we seek it, provide His healing hands and feet through His people

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people gathered in support of eachother

Therapy with a good Christain therapist, prayer from spiritual warriors, support from those who have walked a similar path are all ways to remind us that we do not need to isolate, to walk alone to hide or to bury things about ourselves or things we have been through.  God wants us to bring that which we hide, which we bury into the light of of His goodness and healing. And He will often take our shame, our pain, our fears and produce from it something that brings light and hope for others.  

The choice is yours- Do you want to spend an enourmous amount ot energy keeping something buried… with the short term benefit of appearing fine....or are you willing to expose it to the light and bring deep and profound healing into your life?

This has been a post written with the prompt bury from the FMF writing communty