When You're Keeping a Secret You've Never Told Anyone

Brene Brown is a research professor at the University of

Houston and she didn't set out to study shame. She set out to

study human connection. She wanted to understand what makes

people close to each other and what breaks that closeness down.

She interviewed hundreds of people and kept running into

something she couldn't name at first, something underneath the

stories about disconnection that she hadn't seen coming. She

pulled back from the data and spent time figuring out what it

was. It was shame. And what she found out about it eventually

became one of the most quoted sentences in modern psychology.

The less you talk about it, she said, the more you got it. She

described shame as something that feeds on its own secrecy.

Left unspoken, it creeps into every corner of a person's life.

It convinces the person holding it that they're the only one who

has it and everyone else is fine that if anyone ever found out,

they wouldn't be worthy of connection anymore. We'll come

back to what she found is the one that stops it. But first,

welcome to Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. I'm Bart Leger. If

there's something you've never said out loud to anyone, then

this devotion is for you. This one I've watched up close for

years. I've spent a lot of time listening to people in my study,

hearing what's gone wrong in their lives. And here's what

I've learned. A lot of what people bring to me traces back

to a secret, something they've never told a soul. It shows up

most of all in relationships where the thing left unsaid does

its slow damage between two people who love each other. I

know the pull to keep something in. We all do. I don't say any

of this to scare you. I say it because I've watched what

happens when someone finally tells the truth and it's the

opposite of what they feared. Most of us have at least one

thing we've never said out loud. It could be something we did or

something done to us that we decided no one would ever hear

about. We bury it because burying it feels safer. And at

first, it is. The secret stays put. Nobody knows about it. But

secrets don't stay the same in size in the dark. They grow.

That's what Brene Brown kept running into. The secret

convinces you that you're the only one. And people knew,

they'd back away from you. So you keep it, and keeping it cost

you the very closeness you were trying to protect. This is

exactly what James saw 2,000 years ago before the research

caught up. He doesn't dress it up when he wrote it. He gives an

instruction. He said in James 5.16,

Notice what James ties confession to. He's saying the

thing you've kept hidden loses its grip the moment you speak it

to someone who prays with you instead of pulling away. The

secret was never as strong as it seemed while you kept it to

yourself. Because sin grows in private. Bring it into the light,

and it starts to die. And you don't have to announce it to a

crowd. James says, tell each other. One safe person, maybe a

counselor or a friend or a pastor who's earned your trust.

Healing starts with one sentence you've never said, spoken to

someone who will stay with you. Brown eventually put it this way.

It cannot survive empathy.

act of naming the thing out loud to someone who responded with

empathy was the thing that reliably broke shame's hold. The

person who said the thing they'd never said out loud and then

watched the person across from them stay and listen rather than

pulling away, discover that the secret they'd been protecting

had less power than they thought. James 5.16 is the same

instruction in just different ways of saying it. Confess your

sins to each other and pray for each other, and you'll be healed.

God built the mechanism long before the research confirmed it.

Whatever you've been keeping, it's growing in the dark. Saying

it out loud is how you stop that. Here's today's challenge. Name

the secret to yourself first. Get specific about the one thing

you've been protecting. Then take it to God in prayer, out

loud, the way you'd say it to a person. Tell him the thing that

you've been keeping from everyone else, he already knows,

and he hasn't pulled away from you. And then if you're ready

for the next step, pick one saved person and say it to them

this week. The relief on the other side of that sentence is

probably closer than you think. Father, you see the thing we've

never told anyone. We've kept it in the dark long enough that we

started to believe the dark was safe. Thank you that you already

know and you haven't turned away from us. Give us the courage to

say it out loud, first to you, then to one person we can trust.

Heal what that secret has been doing to us, and let the truth

bring us back into the light. In Jesus' name, amen. If Daily

Devotions for Busy Lives has been an encouragement to you,

would you take a minute and leave a rating and review? It

helps more people find these devotions, and it only takes a

moment. I'd be so grateful. Thanks for joining me on Daily

Devotions for Busy Lives. Remember, the secret you've been

keeping was never as strong as it felt in the dark, and saying

it out loud is how it loses its hold. Come back next time for

more encouragement to help you live grounded in God's truth.

Until then, God bless, and have a great day.