Hide and Seek

When my children were small, they loved to play hide and seek, always searching for the perfect spot to hide ... the place where no one would ever find them. They especially loved traveling to Tennessee and playing the game at my mom and dad's house with their youngest cousins. Mom and Dad had a two-story house with a huge yard that offered them all sorts of places to squirrel themselves silently away as they listened intently to the seeker trying to find them.

One thing that always fascinated me as I watched my children playing this particular game was how they never seemed to tire of it. At least they never tired of hiding ... not one of them ever wanted to be the seeker; to a fault, each one of them always wanted to do the hiding. Hiding was easy ... finding a nook or cranny to sneak into was much simpler than searching out where the other kids were lurking.

Hiding is something I know quite well ... for many years, I hid away inside a bottle, trying to drink away my hurts. I became an expert when it came to hiding ... hiding my emotions, hiding my feelings, hiding my pain. I became so good at concealing the real me that I eventually didn't even need the booze to help me with my deception any longer ... I revealed only what I chose to reveal and only to a few certain people. I had found my "spot" ... my perfect spot to hide.

Over the last year or so, God has allowed me to be in various situations that have caused me to realize that all of us are hiders in some way at certain times in our lives; all of us have things that we keep tucked away, hidden, buried deep within ... things that we don't want others to know about, things that we think will change the way people think about us or alter our place or status in the church or the workplace or society in general.

Coming to the realization that my tendency is to most often choose to be the hider has not been an easy thing for me. It's been difficult to hand over the key to my Lord, to allow Him to unlock the vault of my soul and search deeply within my spirit. But He is ever faithful to His promises, and the more I am willing to let Him in, to let Him reveal His love for me and to me, the more He heals me, teaches me, grows me, uses me. I am eternally grateful that He is the ultimate seeker ... no matter where I try to hide, He never stops looking for me until He finds me.

"O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways." Psalm 139: 1-3