Meditations from the heart

There is a place I go to within myself. I go there when I feel afraid and insecure. It is warm and comfortable. It is where I retreat to when I am hurting and feel unloved and unaccepted. It is where I hide. Only thing is I am a prisoner of all my coping mechanisms. I’m locked up safe inside. My breathing has slowed down and my heart is numb. This is where I was the day that God said: Mary stop hiding. His breath, His words a gentle whisper took my breath away. I have been hiding all my life. I do this in so many different ways in my life. First it begins inside my heart. It grows icy and then I begin to shut down. I grow deathly quiet and my mind goes blank. Then it goes out of my body. I go away and you never hear word from me again. This is my hiding place. But I have grown tired over these years of the loneliness, isolation and depression. I think I was ready to hear these words and I think God had been preparing me for them. Luke 8:16 says you wouldn’t light a lamp and cover it with a clay pot. You’re not going to hide it under your bed. No, when you light it, you’re going to put it out in the open so your guests can feel welcome and see where they’re going. There was a time in my life when I hated who I was but slowly I have grown to love and accept who God has has made me to be. God began to reveal to me how He had come inside of me and lit up all the dark places within and that is where He lives. For Galatians 2:20 says have been crucified with the Anointed One—I am no longer alive—but the Anointed is living in me; and whatever life I have left in this failing body I live by the faithfulness of God’s Son, the One who loves me and gave His body on the cross for me. When I hide I also hide Christ from those in my life. This moment of naked vulnerability cracked my heart wide open. I have said all these years that I believe and trust in God but what I have really been trusting in is my hiding. Instead of letting God protect me I had been protecting myself. It was time for some repentance. Repentance requires a turning of direction. Repentance required a yes. It was time to come out into the open and show who I am and who Christ had changed me to be. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says Now all of us, with our faces unveiled, reflect the gloryof the Lord as if we are mirrors; and so we are being transformed, metamorphosed, into His same image from one radiance of glory to another, just as the Spirit of the Lord accomplishes it. It was time to pull down the veil and reflect who God is in me. To be a mirror of his love and grace. Now I’m on the other side of my yes and God has brought me places I could have never dreamed of but places God has dreamt for me. I can say with certainty it is good and it is beautiful. Maybe you are where I use to be feeling hurt and hiding. Maybe it’s your safe place, certainly it is warm and comfortable there but all the same it’s a slow and numbing place. Maybe you’re tired of feeling disconnected and depressed and you’re ready to take that step and say yes. To come out into the open and see Christ stretched open vulnerable and naked. Maybe it’s time you do the same. Maybe it’s time to welcome those in your life into your heart and help them see where they are going as Christ once did for you and let them see what it means to be free and to be seen.