What are you hiding? Something that no one knows about you? Maybe you have hid it for so long there are times that you forget. It’s still there. In the closet. Behind a door that masks the dark side of your heart. A skeleton in your closet. The famous idiom suggests things you have done in the past that you don’t want others to know – a secret.
Secrets destroy. They erode at our souls, slowly. They eat at our self confidence and authentic self. They cost us enormous amounts of energy to keep hidden. We doubt and live in fear that if discovered we would not be loved, accepted or esteemed.
As a young boy I remember being terrified of the dark. The shapes that would form in darkness would paralyze me with fear. My mind would play tricks on me with questions and doubts? My imagination would run wild with speculations. Am I safe? Will I be harmed? Am I alone? Over time, my fears were exposed, and I saw what was real.
I know many people live with these skeletons in their closets and fear being found out. Bound to the dark imagination of “What if?”
I love this picture I took in a local museum when the girls were younger. Not one of them felt fear. But shove the skeletons in a closet, in the dark, they would have been terrified. Skeletons displayed, remove all fear and give us a chance to be real, authentic and free. The irony about our skeletons is that God sees them…in our closets. Despite his HD view of our secrets, he still loves us and whispers for us to not be defined by secrets.
What are you hiding? I suggest you open the closets and humbly display your skeletons. Sit with a friend and practice being real, honest and open. Take the hinges off the closets in your soul. Let someone listen to your secrets and experience the love that “bears all things.” In these moments of truth telling, we cultivate the soil of a deeper relationship with God and others.
Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Luke 12.2
Troy A Murphy 