Encouragement

Only in the Light

by Terry Barlow
03/18/13
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How needful to be reminded of the advantage of being more transparent about the things that tend to worry or preoccupy us. Everyone is haunted by something. Opening up to a friend or someone we trust about some issue that has been nagging at us is jusy plain healthier than carrying it around indefinitely; healthier mentally and emotionally. So often we tend to play our "cards close to our vests." There is nothing wrong with occasionally showing certain ones "a card or two in the hands we've been dealt." Not the whole hand mind you, just a card or two. I did this recently and I felt better for it, not because of what feedback I received necessarily but because at last the load was being shared. It felt so right! The light could finally enter. (There are overflowing kinds of burdens that are meant to be shared, and there are "backpack' loads that we bear up under ably alone. The former kind invites and requires help, but we dare not intefere with the latter. May we discern the difference. See Galatians 6) A great teacher once put it this way: the blood of Christ only does its (ongoing) cleansing work in the light. If we cover what needs exposure we are blocking that sacred yet practical work, and pathologies breed in the resulting darkness. "Confess your faults one to another...that you may be healed." Some knock the Catholic confessional booth, but find no Protestant equivalent and wind up with a therapist or at the Psychiatrist's office. Is it really that different? Thank God for therapists but at the same time, maybe there's a simpler way.