I’ve heard it said that you are as sick as your secrets. I don’t know about you, but a statement like that sends me reaching for the measuring stick. I carefully lay out all of my secrets–everything I hold in, and I measure each one. It probably goes without saying that I’ve fashioned this measuring stick myself, and that it is most certainly inaccurate; but all the same, I will use it to try and prove how sick I am not.
The truth is that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), and when I measure with my own ruler, I leave absolutely no room for the work of the cross.
I think this is how the saying should really go: Our secrets are sick, and the longer that we try to keep them under control and handle them on our own, the sicker they make us as well. It isn’t as catchy of a phrase, but I think truth has its own special ring to it. Oh, and before I go any further, allow me to clarify: If you are planning a surprise party or a fairytale proposal for your significant other, carry on, my friend. Those are not the kinds of secrets I am referring to.
I’m talking about the burdens that we keep to ourselves; the hurts from our past that we don’t want to face; the problems that we are trying to solve in our own power; the habits that we’ll lie to protect. These are the secrets that make us sick because they separate us from the Healer.
Secrets Keep Us Separate
My coworkers tell me that I “turtle” when things get stressful at work. It means that I go inside my hard shell and wait for the storm to pass.
“Where’s Jones?” they say. “Oh, she’s turtling. She’s all right. She’ll be back.”
It seems that others are aware of my mobile fortress. I hadn’t realized that my walls were so visible. This revelation has led to examination, and I think that the turtle analogy tracks in my personal life as well. When the storm comes, I start missing Sundays. I talk less, I listen less. I retreat to my shell.
It’s easy to be open and honest when life is good and I’m happy. I pop right out of bed on a Sunday morning, ready to praise God and connect with my community. It’s when things get hard and I need it the most that I can’t make myself face people or even bring it to God.
So, why do we keep them?
Fortunately, I’ve had a lot of time to think inside my turtle shell, and here’s why I think we hide:
1) We think we can handle whatever it is on our own, and we don’t want to bother anyone with it, 2) we’re afraid of the rejection or embarrassment that we may face in bringing our darkness to light, or 3) we’re afraid of how our lives will have to change when we admit the pain and submit to God’s control.
So we keep our burdens to ourselves and press on. I’m convinced that we all do this at one point or another—but while we may be skilled at keeping our struggles from other people, there isn’t anything we are keeping from God—and all the lies that we conceive to protect our secrets only push us further from the only one who can heal us. Not because He doesn't know, but because that's what sin does. It separates us from God. Often I find myself acting as though my burdens are simultaneously too big for Him to solve and too small for Him to be bothered with, but neither one of those is true. Handing things over to Christ's care and control is a gift that He gives to us because He loves us, and He wants us, and there is so much He can do with us when we stop hiding.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28)
My Secret
If it’s all right with you, I’d like to share with you a time when my secret kept me isolated and separate from the Healer for far too long:
When I started attending Celebrate Recovery 6 years ago, I was an incredibly angry person. I was angry at myself, I was angry at my parents, angry at my boyfriend, angry at God—and I was ready to deal with all of those specific issues. But I was angry about something else that I wasn’t even able to say out loud. In fact, I was so desperate to keep control of it that I almost made it all the way through a 12 Step Study without ever bringing it up. I was angry at the man who had raped me almost a decade before.
It was a secret that was eating me alive.
It felt like this man had reached inside my soul and stolen something intangible, yet crucial to my identity and to the way I saw myself. After that night, I believed that something was irrevocably changed about me—something was missing that I would never recover. So the next steps I took didn’t look like someone who was trying to put her life back together. They looked like someone trying to cope with a life that had fallen apart—making do with what little was left, and trying to make peace with pieces that just didn’t fit anymore.
I didn’t tell anyone when it happened because, to be honest, I was embarrassed. I was humiliated that I had let this happen. It hurt to remember that night and to think of myself as being that vulnerable, that clueless, that trusting. It was difficult to admit to myself that I had been so careless with something so valuable, and my biggest fear was that I would share this pain with someone else . . . and they would agree with me. I was desperate to hear someone tell me that these thoughts were untrue, that I was still valuable, that I was fixable—but I was too afraid to let anyone close enough to see the pain.
I held this secret so tightly to my chest that at some point, we became one, the pain and I. It was my new identity. An invisible badge on my broken heart that justified my anger, my isolation, and my lack of trust. I called it “independence” to convince myself that I wasn’t really just lonely. I planned on a life alone because I couldn’t imagine anyone coming along who could make up for what he’d taken.
You can imagine how sick I must have felt—holding that secret up to my self-conceived measuring stick and comparing it to what I perceived others to be going through in their own lives. Of course, I can look back on this now and see the convoluted way of thinking—and I guess that’s my point in sharing this. When we keep these struggles to ourselves; when we refuse to let anyone else even see the burden that we carry, we open ourselves up completely to the devil himself. What we keep from God is an invitation to the devil to wreak havoc on our hearts, but when we surrender our fears of what could go wrong, we invite God in to point our pain to His purpose. A purpose far greater than our own.
So we say with confidence: "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?" (Hebrews 13:6)
Jesus Is the Healer
In the four Gospel books of the Bible, the books that tell of Jesus’s time on earth with His disciples, we read stories of people who did crazy stuff just to get to the feet of Jesus. In Matthew 9:20-22, Mark 5:25-34, and Luke 8:43-48 we read of a woman lunging through a crowd of people just to touch the corner of Jesus’s robe as He passed, believing fully that just touching His clothing would heal her. I mean, can you imagine what was going through her head and her heart when she saw Him pass and it was “go time”? The only detail that the Bible gives about this woman is that she has been “bleeding for twelve years.” According to the law, she was unclean (Leviticus 15:25-27), and if anyone were to touch her, they too would be unclean (Leviticus 15:31).
People must have shunned her, rejected her, abandoned her. This woman was left to walk alone in her pain for twelve years, and she had to have known that she was subjecting herself to anger and further rejection when she lunged through a crowd of people to get to the healing that she knew Jesus could give her—and what did He do? He made it a point to find her among the crowd, so that He could look her in the eyes when He said,
“Daughter, your faith has healed you.” (Mark 5:34)
Not Fear. Faith.
In Matthew 9:2-8, Mark 2:2-12, and Luke 5:17-26 we read of a man who is paralyzed and desperate to get to Jesus. Because his friends could not find a way through the crowd that surrounded Jesus in a home where he was teaching, they dug a hole in the roof and lowered him down on a mat, right to the feet of Jesus, and right into the center of a crowd that included “teachers of the Law and the proud religious law-keepers” who must have fancied themselves as having the most authority in that room.
Again, we aren’t given the man’s full story, but have you ever read Deuteronomy 28? It’s a lovely chapter about the curses built into the covenant that God made with the Israelites when He brought them out of Egypt and into the promised land. It’s essentially a list of all that would go wrong if God’s people failed to keep His commands. I can only imagine how easy it would have been for people living under this covenant to believe that this man’s affliction would have been caused by his own sin—that he had brought it upon himself, or that somewhere in his bloodline—his father’s father’s somebody had introduced the generational sin that this man was being punished for. This guy and his friends boldly went after Jesus like they knew how this story would end—because isn’t that what faith is? And Jesus just used his whole story to show the world who really had the authority. I mean, talk about a mic drop, am I right?
“Who is this Man Who speaks as if He is God? Who can forgive sins but God only?” Jesus knew what they were thinking. He said to them, “Why do you think this way in your hearts? Which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or, ‘Get up and walk’?
“So that you may know the Son of Man has the right and the power on earth to forgive sins,” He said to the man who could not move his body, “I say to you, get up. Take your bed and go to your home.” (Luke 5:21-24)
Out of Hiding
There are so many safe places in God's community to share our lives. I've been in recovery for 6 years, and this is where I've found mine. This is the place where I share my life, my burdens, my fears, and my story. I didn't have to lower myself down through any ceilings or hurl myself through any large crowd (though putting myself out there felt a little like that at first). In Celebrate Recovery, I found no judgment, only grace, for there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Jesus paid the price for our redemption. He recovered us from the jaws of the enemy, and even though we still struggle, we celebrate that we are free.
In finally letting my secret out, I have been able to look at the damage of my denial in the light of God’s grace and not the dim, blinking bulb of my own understanding. With the Holy Spirit inside me and a supportive community around me, I have been able to examine my wounds and realize the effect that they've had on my life. I can see the patterns and connections between the pain of my past and my present behaviors.
Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. (James 5:16)
Part of the process of recovering our lives and our peace is forgiving those who have hurt us—and I was able to do that. I forgave the man who had stolen a piece of me. Not for his freedom, but for mine. And all of that anger, resentment, and pain—every little piece that I had been holding so tightly to myself, the pieces that I thought were part of me, they fell away like scales, and now I can see that I was never alone in it, even when I tried to be.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. (Psalm 139:7-8)
Or to personalize it a little—if I go inside my turtle shell, You are there.
Living Free
I carried my secret for 8 anxiety-ridden, lonely years before I finally admitted my hurt, and though the work that Christ was doing in my heart was only just beginning, the relief that I felt in saying it out loud was instantaneous—like the bleeding had finally stopped, and now the healing could begin. And through that healing, God has given me more than I ever thought was taken.
Have you been secretly struggling with something that you’re afraid to admit? Have you been trying to handle it all by yourself? Are you measuring with a broken measuring stick? Because I can promise you this: It is for freedom that you have been set free (Galatians 5:1). You don't have to be yoked to a burden that God can use for His glory.
Consider the impact that Jesus made with these acts of faith: He used the bleeding woman’s faith to show everyone watching that He alone can make us clean, and He used the paralyzed man’s belief to show everyone watching that He could (and would) take away the sins of the world. How many more people were impacted by witnessing what God can do with real, open, lay it all on the line—faith?
And then consider this:
What could He do with yours?
Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” (Mark 5:33-34)
Recommended Resources
Celebrate Recovery
Celebrate Recovery at Central Bible Church
Central Counseling