A Safe Place

A Safe Place

It started with a sweater. It was chilly that morning, and the sweater was harmless enough. Coral in color, zip up with a hood, from The Children’s Place. My daughter had already worn it countless times without complaint that season.

“No,”she said when she saw it laid out with the clothes I had brought down to dress her. “I don’t wike dat sweater.”

All other sweater options meant going up and down the steps yet again and we were already late.

“Well, that’s what you are wearing,” I said, cheerfully. “You can take it off when you get to school.”

Father God, help me to remember that there is nothing that You and I can’t handle together. We are so blessed to have Your perfect love act as our safe place even when we are at our worst.

Innocent enough words to start off a world war, don’t you think? But that’s exactly what followed. It was a bloody and merciless battle, both parties refusing surrender long after it was clearly the reasonable thing. It finally ended with my daughter in hysterics, and me ordering her to go sit in her room until she could calm down. She reached for me, her sobs wracking her little body, her cheeks streaked with tears.

“Momma!” she wailed. “I can’t!”

Four years old. Convinced she didn’t want to wear that sweater and not yet developed the skills needed to process the big emotions she was having over it. She was bringing me those big emotions so that we could handle them together. That’s what a parent does. They serve as the safe place to bring the things we can’t yet handle alone.

So if God is our Father, wouldn’t that also make Him our safe place? Doesn’t He want us to take our pain to Him?

Over the past month, I’ve had the honor to interview several LifePoint mental health professionals for our recent Well With My Soul article series. This past week, I sat down with Dr. Dana Timothy Peterson, who shared some wise words. He said, “There’s this misconception that we can’t question God or let God see us at our worst, but that’s not true. He wants to be our safe place. There is no pain that He cannot heal.” Even when it’s over things much bigger than a sweater, “Whatever baggage we bring to our relationship with Him, He can handle. We cannot ‘out-pain’ God.”

When we’re sobbing, when we’ve acted at our worst, when we’re overcome with emotions, when we just can’t handle it, God wants us to do exactly what my daughter did that morning. Hold out your arms to Him and say “I can’t.” He will take it from there.