Thought for The Day - Discovery

After the Dance 18 x 24 mixed media

We can never know all there is to know and yet it behooves us to know all we can...

Years ago, I dated a young lady who, before I met her, seemed like she would be a complete mystery. Being shy myself and unwilling to face rejection, I was hesitant, to say the least to approach her. I allowed her sophisticated persona to dazzle me. But in spite of all the barriers, I went for it, asked her out or at least offered her ride home from church. We talked on the way to her home and in little or no time, we were getting to know one another. For a few weeks, I would give her a ride from Bible study and even picked her up a few times and in the brief period we dated, I got to know a lot of facts about her life. I found out she wasn't as aloof and sophisticated as I thought. She was no slouch, had a good mind, but she was down-to-earth and very open to talk.

At some point, in one of our long conversations, I said to her: "you're telling all of these details about you, but I still feel like there's much more you're not telling me." Like so many people I talk with, I find it's easy to get the "facts" of our lives out on the table, but we never get to the heart of who we are. We can tell about "this", reveal a little of "that" ("except, I won't tell you about the heartache I suffered as a result of _____ and how that still haunts me at this very moment.") but it amounts to "surface details." I get it, I understand; I'm not an open book, though I hope through this format, a great deal of what I think about and how I feel is revealed. Funny: it just hit me this media is an opportunity to unveil the "secret life of Eddie."

Here's a couple more interesting truths I've discovered:

• For whatever reason, some people tell a great many "half-truths" about themselves, even when they tell you their being candid, open and honest. If you dig "around" what is said, you find there's far more to the story. It always leaves me wondering why the "whole truth" wasn't told. In sharing what is uttered, I wonder about what "you" want me to know and why it's necessary to withhold what is...
• The walls we erect and the parts of us we share are all one big picture. When we ignore or highlight only one part, the damage, pain and hurt we hide does not get healed. And like our bodies, these wonderful regenerative vessels we inhabit, what could be healing, when it is 'misapplied' (or should I say "when healing is refused") we create a place where hurt spreads like a cancer.

I leave you with this quote, apply it liberally to you life: "Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part, You will make me to know wisdom." Psalms 51:6 (NKJV)