Do You Have a Secret?
The photo of these crosses was captured at Willow Creek Community Church on the corner of Algonquin Rd and Barrington Rd in South Barrington, Illinois. The crosses have been removed and there are now pine trees in their place.
When I was just a teenager, a woman in my life opened up about a big family secret. It wasn’t something she had done, but something that had been done to her. This sin committed against her started when she was five and finally came to an end when she ran away from home at 16. She was in her forties when she told me the whole ordeal. She had gone on to get married and have children, all while holding this big secret inside. I didn’t ask her to tell me. It was an unexpected conversation. I stood there stunned at what I was hearing. When she was done she said, “I’ve never told that to anyone.”
I left that day a little heavier. I didn’t know what to do with the information and quite frankly the story is what nightmares are made of. That’s the first time I can recall stuffing another person’s story deep in my soul.
When I started giving my testimony the confessions I received from people went off the charts. It was about ten years ago that the stories started coming on a weekly basis. I don’t go looking for people to share their secrets. Some of the people I barely know, yet I regularly find myself listening to stories. Honestly, I don’t enjoy these testimonies because they are heartbreaking. I find myself downhearted right along with whoever I’m listening to. Sometimes afterwards I find myself wrestling with a spirit of fear because I now am unpleasantly aware of evils I was blissfully ignorant of before the tail was told.
I have heard people tell me about incest, extramarital affairs, addictions, pastors who sexually abuse their kids, father’s who rape their daughters. An ex parole officer unloaded dark tales on me while I was trying to tour a homeschool co-op.
When my son said he was going into the military I laid prostrate on the floor in prayer. Years earlier, a man I knew made a confession surrounding sexual assault in the military. He had been victimized by a man of higher rank. He entered the Navy as young boy with dreams of a career and family, he left the Navy hollow, utterly broken and suicidal. I was seized with terror at the thought of how someone else’s sin had impacted that sailor. I didn’t want that kind of evil to touch my child.
Being a story-keeper has marked me. I don’t look at the world the same way I used to. Every person is fighting a battle I know nothing about and I feel small when I’m in these mountains of heartache and pain.
I’ve been asked why I share so many horrible details of my own story. Honestly, I didn’t actually ever aim to tell my secrets, it was just something God asked me to do. It took a really long time for me to be willing and then even longer to obey. I come from a family with a lot of secrets and I didn’t know where to start. Bless the Lord who asked me to start with my sins. He knows exactly how to refine me.
The Bible says, Confess your sins to one another and pray for each other so that you can be healed. Yes please! I want healing. The path to healing however, is not so fun. The Bible also says, that if a brother or sister falls into sin to restore them gently. I wish the circles I’ve been in understood how important this is. We are supposed to forgive the person who sinned so they won’t be overwhelmed with excessive sorrow.
We are not meant to hold these toxic secrets! Secrets are death. We really are as sick as our secrets.
What happens when the secret sins start coming out and the people (God’s people) who are supposed to comfort you, instead condemn you? I don’t know how it’s been for other people, but for me I would say I’ve lost my sparkle. Life isn’t fun anymore. My body hurts all the time. Grief is my constant companion. Many of my dreams have not come true. I asked God for love and He answered that prayer by giving me Jesus, a cross of my own to carry and difficult people to love.
I spent the better part of my summer doing a Bible study on sexual healing. A woman from church invited me into what could only be described as God’s intensive care. Somewhere between giving my testimony and listening to other people’s survival stories, I got stuck. I got stuck and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t write. I didn’t know how to move forward.
Over the years of me pouring out my secret sins, there where people who started to understand where my testimony was headed. They understood that their secret sins intersected my story and that’s how I learned that whistleblowers get punished. Snitches get stitches is what one man told me.
I’m expected to apologize to the people who hurt me. It doesn’t seem fair. It feels like people are getting away with it…whatever “it” is. There are people who know they’ve done me wrong and they aren’t coming forward. I’ve been slandered, misjudged and attacked because people won’t tell their own stories. I live in the company of secrets and I am amongst gas lighters who are trying to deny my reality. Don’t you know that your secret sins are in God’s sight? Everyone has to give an account to God for what we do while we are in the body, both good and bad.
I realize the devastating impacts my sins have caused to both myself and other people. I’m responsible and have to give account for so much suffering that I never intended. Waking up in the Vally of destruction made by my own choices, made me realize I needed to change.
I remember a comic I saw once of a caterpillar and a butterfly sitting across from each other at a table. The caterpillar says to the butterfly, “You’ve Changed” and the butterfly replies, “We’re supposed too.”
Years ago I wrote a blog post called Courage To Tell The Truth About Sin and in it I talked about the fact that there were people in my story who were keeping secrets. My hope and prayer is for each person to come forward with the truth. I’m praying that family and friends will be kind and merciful. Giving a personal account is difficult but not impossible.
God strengthened me and helped me to tell the truth about my sins. Then when after a very long time had passed and He saw that I was stuck because guilty parties had not fess up, God placed me in a group of women who validated me. They listened to me, cried with me, prayed with me and got me out of the rut I was in. I was in a safe environment where I could process what happened to me and forgive people who hurt me. I’m free now to move on with my life.
I’m urging you all to tell your secrets. Confess your sins. Find safe people who will sit and cry with you over mistakes you made and what’s been done to you. It’s the mercy of God that led me to repentance. Jesus didn’t come into the world to condemn sinners, but to save us.
In an effort to show my sincerity and to possibly help at least one other person I will be sharing a story in the future about how God used ducks to reveal an unconfessed sin of my own. I don’t know if the next blog post will come out soon, but I hope so. I’ve been writing and running and moving the needle forward towards my goals again. God will ultimately unfold my testimony on his terms and He will get all the glory.
If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you to some extent—not to put it too severely. The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient. Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him,so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him. 2 Corinthians 2:5-8
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. James 5:16
Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy. Proverbs 28:13
