What is your secret?

Do you have a secret? Yes I do and I will never tell.  Funny thing about the south and secrets because we all have “skeletons in our closets” and sweep our cat pooh under the rug because we know for fact that our houses are never clean. That is what is called old time evangelicalism. Those antiquities of petrified cat pooh and fossilized bones are found years later by some descendant doing a genealogy research on the family. Our secrets do come out of the closet and blow out from under the rug eventually.

(1Timothy 1:15) “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”

Those secrets are so often our sins.

Those secrets may be horrible experiences.

Do not fool yourself into thinking that you are not hiding something from anyone—you are only hurting your chances to be free.  Get it off your chest and forgive yourself and talk to God about it. Then it is no longer hidden.

The horrible experience secrets are the hardest to get off your chest. You might ask why forgive yourself? Well you just should. Deep in our hearts sometimes we feel responsible for bad things that happened to us. If we forgive ourselves, then we admonish any doubt in our conscious state.

I once recently spoke of a secret that I had kept for more than 21 years. When my son was 3 months old in 1990, I had a serious gallbladder attack. I rushed to the local hospital thinking my guts were being torn apart. They administered a very strong pain killer which sent my alertness into another world. I was wheeled into the imaging department. I was dressed in hospital gown. A man came over to me and pulled my gown open and felt my stomach to ask me where the pain was. I never saw his face but I heard his voice and saw the necklaces around his neck. I saw them enough to remember as he fondled my breast. I called for help and shushed me and said I was dreaming. I remember him putting his hands in between my legs and then I fought him as much as my conscious state would allow. He stopped because I started swatting at him and making a lot of noise. I wanted to kick him and felt that I couldn’t.  He covered me up quickly because another person entered the room. I remember him saying that I was fretful because of the medication they had given me in the emergency room. Everyone male that entered my hospital room for the next 4 day stay, I immediately looked at their neck. I never saw him again.  

I didn’t report it until the nightmare started about a week later. They were horrible. I was 2 months into being 30 years old when that happened.  Needless to say no one in my family found out about it until this very night.  I told my son (of course he is no longer three month’s old but in his 20s.) He was listened intently with a great deal of concern for his aging mother.

I remembered this incident when I started thinking about secrets we store. I had to forgive myself over this because I my ignorant mind I thought may I had provoked the attack so I asked God to forgive me. But you know what I didn’t provoke it or cause it.   But the ultimate solace came from the word of God.

So what secrets we have in our “closed door closet” or “under our rug” let them out. If you never tell anyone, confess them privately to God. The union of the Holy Trinity will ease your pain and suffering.

May each of you be blessed and nestled safely in the arms of God.

If you need me to pray for you, leave a message, or email at juliaburns253@gmail.com