Hide and Seek

As a child, I loved the game of hide and seek. I would attempt to find the funniest or most bizarre place where I would fold my scrawny, flexible self into the most odd place possible. When I was hiding, I felt safe.

As I grew older, I would think of a hiding place in my home, just in case I needed to escape - like if someone broke into my house. I liked knowing where I could hide to feel safe from harm.

I still love to play hide and seek with my grandkids, surprising them with the places I hide or looking for them, even if I already know where they are. I’m not as skinny or flexible as I used to be, so I’m limited about where I hide.

I have attempted over the years to hide the “true” me for fear my friends and family wouldn’t like me if they knew me. I hide by camouflage. I try to appear to be someone else: someone who has a perfect marriage, perfect kids, perfect child of God, or put together both outwardly and inwardly. But if you stay in hiding forever, I’ve noticed, it’s not only exhausting to keep the Illusion alive, it’s lonely. As I step out of my hiding place and speak honestly, invariably, there is a sense of relief. I’ve found that friends and family embraced rather than shunned me when I allowed my frailties to show.

I have found great solace in “hiding myself in God.” There is safety from loneliness or sorrow and the enemy of fear. Yet, there are times when I try to hide even from God. Maybe if I stay quiet or don’t think of Him, He won’t notice me. Perhaps He won’t read my unkind thoughts or listen to the lies I tell. But I find this is also a fallacy, for when I speak my confessions before God, I feel that He has already sought me out and found me so He can wrap me in His loving arms in a grace-filled embrace. There’s no playing “hide and seek” with God. He knows all the places I hide and has x-ray vision so that even the night can’t hide me.

“Come out, come out wherever you are.”

“Show me the way I should go (to safety)

For to you, I lift up my soul.

Rescue me from my enemies,

Oh Lord, for I hide myself in you.”

Psalm 143:9

“You are my hiding place; you protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.”

Psalm 32:7