When the Hiding Place Disappeared

 There is a connection between the sensitive little girl I once was and the fear I still feel today.

She grew up in a world where punishment and fear were constant companions. To survive, she learned to look for safety wherever she could find it.

For much of my life, that safety lived inside relationships.

What looked like love was often something deeper—a longing to feel protected. A longing to know that someone stronger was standing between me and the things I feared.

Then Jack died.

For the first time in my adult life, the hiding place was gone.

The rug was pulled out from beneath me.

A few months later, the bladder pain arrived.

Perhaps that was a coincidence.

Perhaps not.

What I do know is that the little girl inside me suddenly felt exposed. The safety she had borrowed from someone else was no longer there.

And there was nowhere left to hide.

Not behind a relationship.

Not behind another person.

Not behind the illusion that someone else could rescue her.

For the last two years, I have been sitting beside that frightened child, helping her learn something entirely new:

That safety does not live outside of her.

It never did.

It lives within her.

Within me.

And though the fear still visits, I no longer feel the need to run from it or cover it up.

I am learning to stay.

To comfort the child.

To trust God.

And to discover that the strength I once searched for in others has been quietly waiting inside me all along.