Astrid & Veronika by Linda Olsson

I read a story this weekend about two women… one young, unmarried, isolated by circumstance, and in pain. The other old, widowed, isolated by choice, and in pain. It was an amazing story of how our secret pains can completely cripple and embitter us if we keep them secret and keep them to ourselves. I don’t agree with all of the things the two women in the book believed or come to realize but a few of their observations were quite profound. Here is one…

“I have never talked to anyone about that night. Ever,” she said. “And now when I listen to my own words, I realize that they tell a different story from the one I have carried all these years.” The old woman closed her eyes. “I think that if we can find the words, and if we can find someone to tell them to, then perhaps we can see things differently. But I had no words, and I had nobody.”

Astrid came to this conclusion the night she finally told her new and only friend Veronika about the day her infant child died. I think Astrid is right. How often we try to walk alone in our pain and even in our sin, scared of what people will say or do if they find out how imperfect and human we are. I think God weeps when he sees us isolate ourselves and each other. I don’t know why for sure I think that but I do. I don’t know where is says in the bible that God’s desire is not that we walk alone, easy prey for the enemy whose desire is to destroy us. Maybe it doesn’t at all.

But the message of the gospel is peace and love, hope and life and I don’t think any of those things are meant to happen in a box, in isolation. Nor can they really. Somehow when we find the courage to share the thoughts that bounce around in our heads, the memories that haunt our dreams, awake and asleep, the scars of the hurts of life, or the negative things we believe about ourselves, the act of saying them out loud to another person filters them and helps us sift the truth from the lies. Often, though the reality of what we have done or what has been done to us cannot be changed, what we believe about ourselves as a result of it needs to be changed for us to survive.

Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He wants us to know the truth and He wants the truth to set us free. And sometimes, perhaps all the time, we cannot see that truth without the help of those around us who love us.