Hidden

Last night I went with a couple of friends to see the movie Joy. I haven't been to a movie in forever, so it was a treat. While I wouldn't necessarily recommend this movie (mainly because it moves really slow and not much happens), there was a line that stood out to me and is a deep truth. I wish I could have paused the movie and written it down exactly as she said it.

Joy, the main character, is having a dream as she's trying to put the pieces of her life back together. In her dream she encounters herself as a little girl who says to her, "We've been hiding for 17 years. When you hide no one can see you. The problem is, you also stop seeing yourself."

That is not an exact quote, but the point was pretty profound, and we all do that to some extent. There are circumstances that can cause pieces of us to go into hiding: we get made fun of as a child, we learn to hide as a defense mechanism to protect ourselves, we get so busy just getting through the days that we lose parts of ourselves, we get disappointed by life so we stop dreaming and just go through the motions, we learn to meet the expectations of others...

But there is one from whom we can never hide:

"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.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you" Ps 139:7-12

This Psalm goes on to describe how carefully he was knit together by God's design.

After my son with special needs went into residential care and I got into the habit of getting quiet before God, I started discovering parts of myself that had gone into hiding during the 21 years of caring for him around the clock. There were things about myself that I had forgotten. But the things I had forgotten were in God's safe keeping. As I sat quietly with him, he began to remind me of how wonderfully he had knit me together and about gifts and dreams that needed to be revisited.

It's not a bad thing that I laid down my life in a sense in order to care for my son. It's a form of "dying to self". But resurrection follows dying. Sometimes resurrection can be scary, and we would rather stay hidden.

I pray that as you get quiet and still, you can discover things about yourself that may have been hiding but kept safe in God's heart. And may you also remember, or discover for the first time, how wonderfully you were knit together.

"How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!" verse 17This Psalm goes on to describe how carefully he was knit together by God's design.

"How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They canno