You know…the wet salty substance that forms in your eyes. Have you ever thought about why pain produces water in your eyes? Why does pain from our hearts flow like water? Could it be that God is aware that our hearts could not contain the vast amount of pain we would experience in this world? So He provided a way for broken hearts to find relief…tears. Once that pressure valve gets activated, the tears start flowing. These tears then cascade down our cheeks with unyielding demand.
One day as I was cleaning the kitchen, the ringer on my phone went off. I looked down and saw a message from a friend.
“Can you talk?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
The next text from her read, “Can we meet somewhere?”
Do you remember playing hide and seek when you were a child? Or maybe you play it with your children?
When I was a kid, I have vivid memories of playing hide and seek while at church. Yes, at church!
I grew up as preacher’s kid…P.K. as some would call it and when you grow up as a preacher’s kid, you spend countless hours at the church building waiting on your parents who are typically in meetings with other parents. As we got bored as kids, we would find something to do in our boredom that would not get us in too much trouble. Often, the game of hide and seek became the game of choice. Like the typical game of hide and seek, someone would count while the others would hide. I hated being the “seeker”, the one who counted because I was much better at hiding. I had plenty of practice, so I knew all the best hiding places. But there was one particular church that my dad pastored that had an amazing place to hide. It was a hidden storage space located behind the choir loft. There was a set of stairs in behind the auditorium that most people did not know where they led. But I did! They led to a secret attic with one of the best places to hide and some other creepy things that the church felt they needed to keep.
One, two, three…the “seeker” would start counting and off the rest of us would go. We would scatter fast. I would pretend that I was heading a certain direction, but once the coast was clear I would take off to the secret hiding place…behind the choir loft.
THE WALK 