My dear daughter,
When I was a girl, we used to say, “Secrets don’t make friends.” But, everybody knew that was not true. If you were really friends with someone, you told them your secrets, and a good friend could keep those secrets.
But, what happens if the secret someone tells you makes you feel scared? What happens if those secrets make you feel like someone is really, really bad, or makes you feel like a person who you thought was good, actually can’t be trusted?
What do you do with the secrets then? Worse yet, what if the secret is your own? What if an older person told you that no one would believe you or that you were a liar?
Secrets like that go deep into your heart. When you agree to keep them they bury themselves deep inside the soil of who you are. Then, that soil becomes hard so that the secrets can never come back out. Then, the problem is that for the rest of your life nothing can grow there. The only way for things to grow in that hard-hearted place is for the secrets to be dug back out again. Have you ever tried to dig up something that was buried under rock hard soil? It takes a long time and a lot of tools. Some people might give up.
When I was a girl, I hid my secrets, and I hid the secrets that other people told me. I thought I was being a good friend. But, these secrets made a gigantic hard place in my heart, and when I tried to dig them up I found out that I couldn’t do it on my own. I needed people to help me, and when people weren’t enough I needed a patient gardener who knows all about me. This gardener is the living God, the life force of the world, and He once was a man named Jesus. I found out how gentle He could be, as He slowly watered the hard dirt of my heart and made it soft again. Then, he brought the secrets to the surface and pulled them out of me. It was scary. I had never wanted to think about those things ever again, and this time I had to see them and think about them. But now, my heart is soft again.
My daughter, if anything like this ever happens to you, I want you to know something, the sooner you talk about those kinds of secrets the better. Don’t let you heart become hard like mine. Don’t protect those secrets that make you feel afraid. Let them come out. The gardener will help you, and so will I. To be a good friend, you don’t have to keep those secrets; you need to help others get rid of them.
