Please tell me I am not the only one. How many of you out there have gotten a text from a friend, who you aren’t feeling on solid ground with? You open your phone, your heart races, your mouth goes dry. You read their text as fast as you can, trying to get through all of it. And now, no matter how many times you re-read that text, analyze the emojis, you are confident in this—they hate you. 

All is bad. The world is over. Your friendship of five years, gone, down the drain. And your mutual friends? They hate you too. They haven’t said it, but you feel it in your gut. And their mother’s probably know all about you and hate you as well. 

You walk in the door defeated, tear stained face, heart sick. You see your spouse or your roommate, and you tell them the horrible truth, that your friendship is over with so-and-so, and you are the most hated person on the planet. You show them the dreaded end-of-life text, waiting for them to look at you and say— “ You’re so right. You might as well leave town, because you’re not welcome here anymore.” 

But. As you watch their face, reading this devastating news, there is no emotion on their face. Nothing. They hand the phone back to you, and say, ‘I don’t really see what you’re talking about. They seem fine…I don’t see a problem here.” They read the text back to you out loud, and it’s like it’s been translated into a different language. This can’t possibly be the same text you read hours ago! Yet it’s the same thing, word for word, and your heart starts to lift out of your stomach. You see happy emojis, not sarcastic ones. You see kindness and clarity, not snark and condescension. Well, imagine that. I guess your world isn’t over after all, no need to leave town.

So, thank you, Lord! Thank you for friends, for loved ones, who can come alongside us, and hear the exact same thing we heard, remember the exact same event we both lived through, and have a totally different reaction to it. So often we are ensnared by our past hurts, our past assumptions, current mood, shame, constant self doubt. We can hear others’ words with so much extra ‘padding’ on it, we don’t even know what was truly said! The Lord gave us the church and community for a reason. We all gravitate toward the darkness, especially when we feel at fault, or are terribly hurt by someone. In the book of James, we are called to lean on our fellow brothers and sisters for insight and comfort. 

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. James 5:16

This is so evident in biblical counseling. Saying something out loud, reliving an event or story to someone who has no personal connection to the details or people, can have a life altering effect on the storyteller. They can hear the same words said back to them, without attached emotion, and see the past event in a whole new light and understanding. Bringing our concerns and worries to the Lord is the only way to be truly healed, but he uses our friends and family to help us get there, and to be able to hear His truth to bring them comfort. 

In Christine Hoover’s book With All Your Heart, the chapter on isolation explains the benefit of sharing with others so well: 

There is a reason the Bible tells us to confess our sins to one another. (James 5:16) Confession is an invitation for the light of God’s love, truth and grace to be voiced to the person confessing. We often stay in our monologues, convincing ourselves the distortions are true, when in fact we need a dialogue with fellow believers who remind us of what Christ has done for us…..We like to think we don’t need anyone but ourselves, although our lonely ache and the nagging feeling that we are missing something relationally tell us otherwise. 

So please. Please tell me I am not the only one that has felt the burden lifted when I have shared a secret or heartache with a trusted loved one, who then pointed me back to the truth. Because I am in Christ, I am not condemned, I am forgiven, and I am loved. And the more I practice bringing my hurts into the light, the less I feel the urge to dramatically leave town.