"Even Death and Destruction hold no secrets from the Lord. How much more does He know the human heart!" Proverbs 15:11
I was given the task to begin looking at my childhood with the focus of finding Jesus. This is not an unfamiliar practice and has already brought great healing from some of the most traumatic events in my life. Finding Jesus in those memories has redeemed these things into places of great comfort.
It doesn't erase them. It doesn't mean they don't still cause me pain but, now, interwoven with the darkness is a light beyond imagining. There's a joy, and a fathomless upwelling of gratitude in knowing I wasn't as alone as I believed at the time they happened.
Come back in time with me to a holiday; the kind of holiday where a feast is prepared for company. A padded table protector is placed on the formal dining table, hidden from sight with a tablecloth that only sees the light of day for such a feast.
The good dishes are pulled out of the china cabinet. The special silverware is unwrapped from its protective felt storage bags. The crystal is set out according to the proper etiquette of table setting as passed down through generations of women.
As soon as the table is set, a child sits down. Not because she is hungry. Not because she can't wait for the turkey to be carved. She sits there, still and quiet, utterly fascinated by the play of light and sparkle that only silver and crystal can generate under the light of a chandelier.
Everywhere she looks there are dancing prisms and rays of brilliance. She is utterly delighted and filled with a sense of awe and wonder at the beauty before her.
She is chased away from the table, a critical comment made about her appetite and greed.
She slinks away, silently, because she knew the chaser would not understand. Somehow the world was just a little duller, a little darker away from the table.
Another table. Another meal only this time it was a solitary breakfast. A bowl of cereal floated in milk. The sugar bowl was on the table beside her. Left unattended, she put her allowed spoonful of sugar on the cereal. Grain by grain, the sugar melted as the milk seeped into the dry. The sparkle of the sugar vanished as milk drowned it. She couldn't resist repeating the experiment with spoonful after spoonful of sugar poured out with delighted anticipation.
You can guess where this is going. The parent came into the kitchen, furious that I though I should eat that much sugar. The breakfast bowl was snatched away and the sugar crossly scraped into the sink. "Such a waste!"
The magic vanished. And a shame that should not be moved into a heart that knew it could not share the world she saw in a bowl of cereal.
I never minded the arduous task of polishing the good silver. Being able to release the light from beneath the choking tarnish made it a joy.
I think of all the times I've been utterly enthralled by the play of light and shadow. They were always secret moments, a place of being alone, being still, with the beauty I might find. Even if is in something as small as a pebble.
In these countless memories, the teeth and fangs of other, darker, secrets would vanish.
And that's where Jesus was. He was in the light. He was in the joy and peace I found in seeing the world in a way that I instinctively knew was different. And for those around me, unfathomable.
In spite of everything that has tried to chase me away from the Light, this gift of seeing the world differently has never vanished, never been suffocated. Maybe that's because I kept such a treasure a closely guarded secret, just for me.
Only now I can say, for us, for Jesus and me.
