In the Middle of the Mess

When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand.

—HENRI NOUWEN, OUT OF SOLITUDE

Just before Thanksgiving 2013, my friend Lisa Harper and I were invited to the red-carpet premiere of Max Lucado’s movie The Christmas Candle, which was opening in Dallas.

Lisa flew in from Nashville, and Barry and I picked her up at the airport.

Lisa and I are usually the jeans-and-boots sort of girls, but that night, Lisa wore a black St. John knit suit, and I wore a copper-colored evening dress. Pulling into the parking lot, we could see the camera crew at the end of the red carpet and a Salvation Army band playing by the entrance to the theater.

Barry, as usual, parked as far away as possible from other cars to protect our car from the dings of other car doors. If Barry’s driving, I usually wear comfortable shoes for the walk from where we’ve parked to where we’re going. Why he didn’t drop us off at the front, I have no idea; instead he found what he thought was the perfect spot beside a large tree. As soon as I stepped out of the car, my five-inch heels sank into wet grass. Barry tried to steady me, but in the process, he only succeeded in pushing me over.

Lisa doubled over, howling, and gingerly made her way to me in the heels she was wearing. She tried to help me up, which caused her heels to sink into the mud too. Then she lost her balance and ended up on her knees beside me. Instead of helping, Barry pulled out his camera and began snapping pictures of us crawling across the wet grass like two covert Navy SEALs in dresses. When she collapsed into laughter, I did too, which is never safe for a woman who’s been through childbirth and has a full bladder.

By the time we made it to our feet, our hands and knees were caked in mud, and I was worried about the dampness that surely had to be visible on the back of my dress. “Can you see anything?” I asked Lisa. When she began laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe, I knew our movie-premiere night was over. We got back into the car and headed home.

Lisa—she is one of my safe-place sisters, the kind of friend with whom I can share embarrassment and accomplishment, joy and pain.

When I was released from the hospital in 1992, I left with a new realization that I desperately needed community. I needed a few friends I could trust, friends with whom I could share my darkest secrets. I also knew that I needed to begin lining my life up with the whole Word of God, not just the parts that made me comfortable. I spent so much of my time, either in seminary or in personal study, diving deep into God’s Word, but I hadn’t always understood how to apply this Living Word to my life.

Looking back on it, I can see my misstep, which I think other women fall into too: We can read the Bible and sign up for every Bible study our churches offer, but if there’s no personal application, if we don’t use the truths, we’ll sink deeper into our struggles. We can memorize the text that encourages us to cast our cares on Christ, but if we don’t stop and intentionally cast our cares on Him, the knowledge hasn’t moved from the head to the heart. Whether you’re worried about your children, your ability to pay your bills on time, the results of a medical test, or a million and one other struggles, the Word of God is alive and able to speak peace to every one of our concerns when we stop, listen, and receive. These truths are not only for ourselves but also for each other.

The Word of God is alive and able to speak peace to every one of our concerns when we stop, listen, and receive.

As I committed myself to studying Scripture about my personal need for a community of safe-place sisters, I discovered an overwhelming weight of wisdom.

Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. (1 Thess. 5:11 ESV)

Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken. (Eccl. 4:9–12)

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Heb. 10:24–25 ESV)

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Col. 3:16 ESV)

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul further unpacks the different gifts that each of us bring as the body of Christ, explaining why, though each part may be different, we need each other (1 Cor. 12). Scripture shows us that the healthiest way through this life is in community with one another.

I began to pray, asking God to lead me to the sisters I could commit to. I knew that as life moved on I’d have a larger circle of friends, as Christ had patterned with His twelve disciples but especially with Peter, James, and John. Like Jesus, I wanted to find a few I could invite into my secrets. I wanted safe-place sisters with whom I could break the silences that kept me so bound.

The first came as quite a surprise. In some ways we couldn’t have been more different. We’d met years before when our differences were even more crystal clear. In fact, I discovered that was the whole point of our meeting. My record company couldn’t decide how to introduce me to the American Christian public. Apparently, I didn’t look very Christian. I had short black, spiky (sometimes purple) hair, I wore leather onstage, and I used fog and laser lights.

I remember being puzzled by their dilemma, asking why the content of my makeup case was more important than the content of my heart. The director of marketing said I’d understand if I could see myself in a room standing next to other Christian artists. I’d realize that I looked like a parrot at a hamster convention. I still didn’t get it; this sounded like a compliment.

The record label came up with a solution. Each summer, a retreat was held at Estes Park in Colorado for the artists in the Christian music industry. Every evening the record companies would showcase their artists. Mine decided that the only way to expose everyone to the feathered wonder that was me was to ask the least likely artist if she would introduce me. So they asked Sandi Patty, and to her credit, Sandi said yes.

I liked her immediately. Her conservative dress made me look even more radical, but I couldn’t have asked for a more grace-filled introduction that night. In the years following, we bumped into each other, and we’d catch up, but that was about the extent of our friendship until we ended up on a Christmas tour together. One night, when all the other girls had left the dressing room, Sandi asked if she could talk to me. She took a step of trust and poured out her heart, her brokenness, and the acute pain she’d hidden from so many—pain I’ll guard to my dying day. We wept and prayed together. We hugged.

This woman I’d always seen as so perfect, so untouchable, carried an unbearable weight, and she asked if I might carry it with her. I reminded her that God’s love for her had never been based on the fact that she was “Sandi Patty, one of the most successful Christian recording artists of the time.” It was based on the truth that she is His daughter. She had sung that truth to thousands and thousands of people for years, but that night she needed someone to sing it back to her.

It’s tempting to look at those around us and make assumptions about their lives. They look good. They seem to have everything under control. But sometimes the most perfect-looking people are the most in need of someone to see beyond what they present to the world. That is, of course, my story.

When Sandi opened up to me that night, I had no idea how much I would need her support in just a few short months. Three weeks after being released from the hospital, I appeared as an artist on a cruise to the Caribbean. I’d made the commitment the previous year and couldn’t get out of my contract. I was raw and fragile, and the thought of being with five hundred happy cruising Christians was overwhelming. I stood in line to check onto the ship at the dock in Fort Lauderdale. Everyone was dressed in fun summer clothes and high-heeled sandals. I looked down and saw that I was wearing the moccasins I’d made in my craft class at the psych hospital.

Which one of these is not like the others?

Then she spotted me. Sandi was one of the other artists on board. She came over and pulled me out of the line. She told me that her manager had already taken care of my check-in, so we walked up the gangway onto the ship and straight to her cabin, where I unloaded.

“Okay,” she said, “you don’t want to be here right now, I get that, but here we are. So, my cabin is our safe place on this ship. When you want to run away, run here. When you want to cry, cry here.”

We used that safe place many times on that trip. Some days I needed to be reminded that my worth wasn’t built on the lies I had believed about myself, and some days she needed that same reminder. Her cabin became a holy place where confessing sisters knelt at the throne of grace and mercy together.

I met another sister, my don’t-make-me-laugh-or-I’ll-pee sister, at a Bible study she taught at our church in Nashville. Her class was, of course, the most popular one. She gave out chocolate and Starbucks cards and was an amazing teacher. I liked Lisa Harper instantly and enjoyed her company even though we were not close.

After Barry and I moved to Dallas, I didn’t see much of her for a few years until we ended up sharing a platform as speakers and Bible teachers on the national Women of Faith tour. At times I found the packed arenas lonely places, places where I felt very lost among the large crowds. And during that tour, I found that there was more to my loneliness than the shame I’d carried from my past. I didn’t know how to make friends. I didn’t know how to ask for help. I was very good at being there for others, but my gut-level belief was that if I asked you to be my friend, you’d feel obliged to say yes even though you didn’t want to. These were the lies I believed.

Part of my ongoing commitment to healing, however, was to reject the lies I’d believed for too long, so I decided to step out of what was comfortable. One night, during our team prayer time in the greenroom before the conference began, I prayed this prayer out loud:

Father, I feel like I don’t belong here. I’m surrounded by so many gifted women who love you, and every time I step up onto the stage I wonder if they agree with me that I don’t belong. I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want my fear and insecurity to be greater than Your grace and mercy. Forgive me.

I had no idea that what felt like such a raw, unattractive prayer would open a floodgate of authentic pain from others. Almost every woman in that room shared that she felt the same way. We saw each other as having it all together, women without insecurity or self-doubt. That night, we became broken bread and poured-out wine in the hands of Christ to an audience who felt just as we did. We confessed our sin together, confessed our collective sense of insecurity, and somehow, we found healing.

Within that larger group of sisters, Lisa was the first one I told my biggest secret to. My friends knew that I’d been in a psych ward and that I still took medication, but Lisa was the one I told about my ongoing battle with suicidal thoughts. She heard my confession and hugged me as I cried through the darkness of it. She didn’t hesitate to love me in that moment. She accepted me as I was and loved me where I was, always reminding me of the power of the Word of God.

This safe-sister relationship goes both ways, though. When she’s needed it, I’ve helped carry her pain, too, such as when her journey to adopt a child turned into traumatic heartbreak. Twice, she was within days of receiving a child only to have the dream snatched away. She walked with one young mother through the full forty weeks of pregnancy before being informed that the child would go to another couple. I thought her heart would never mend from the grief and pain.

Then into that well of pain a woman spoke words that cut Lisa to the core, words that must have sounded so much like the words of Job’s friends. It was “God’s will” that the adoption failed, she said. The woman went further, explaining that because Lisa was a single woman with some brokenness in her childhood, she was probably too broken to raise a child alone. She suggested that Lisa go to the pound instead and get a dog. Those words cut. But worse than that, for a time, Lisa believed that lie. She even went to the pound and adopted Cookie, a large mixed-breed with soft eyes.

Lisa could have lived the rest of her life believing she was too broken to be a good mom, but those of us who loved her refused to let those lies take root. Over and over again we came against those lies. I prayed Scripture over her: “I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope” (Hos. 2:15 NIV). Achor, I knew, meant “despair” in the original language. And so, my constant prayer over Lisa was simple: Lord Jesus, may this valley of Lisa’s despair give way to a door of hope!

I was with her the day she received the call that changed her life. We were in a meeting when her phone rang. She slipped out to take the call, so I knew it was important, but when she didn’t come back after a longer time than usual, I went to find her. She was leaning against a wall with tears running down her face, still listening to whoever was on the other end. All I could do was put my arms around her and pray one word over and over again: “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.”

She could hardly speak when she finally got off the phone. A little girl in Haiti had just lost her mother to HIV/AIDS. There were no other relatives who could care for her, and if no one claimed this little girl, her health was so poor she wouldn’t survive.

“They asked me to pray about it,” she said through her tears. “I’ve been praying for thirty years, Sheila. I said yes.”

Thirty minutes later, a photo of a scared, desperately thin little girl was texted to Lisa’s phone. We both sobbed.

“That’s my baby!” she said.

I flew into Nashville on the day she was finally able to bring Missy home from Haiti. For so long, I had walked with Lisa through her darkest hours, so I wanted to be one of the first faces she and Missy saw when they got off the plane. I wanted to be a reminder of the countless prayers we’d brought before God that now had been answered with this rich blessing. I wanted to welcome this darling child into our sisterhood, and share the joy of a homecoming. I also wanted to hug Lisa and celebrate her bravery—she’d listened to her sisters speak truth into the lies she’d believed and had chosen to believe only truth.

I looked at the arrivals board and saw that I had about thirty minutes until their plane landed. There was a toy store nearby, so I looked for something Missy might like. I settled on a pink purse in the shape of a poodle. I bought two little bracelets and put them inside the purse. My heart was racing in my chest as I saw the plane pull into the gate.

“Don’t cry, don’t cry!” I said to myself. “You’ll scare the child.”

The moment I saw Lisa’s face and the darling little girl with colored beads in her hair in Lisa’s arms, I couldn’t contain myself. I hugged them tightly and breathed, “Welcome home, little one, welcome home.” Lisa and I looked at each other. She had brought her daughter home.

When we believe lies about ourselves, it’s easy to fall back into the pit of despair. We have an enemy who is not only a liar but also the accuser of God’s children. He’s not omniscient like our Father God. He doesn’t know what we’re thinking, but he’s watched us fall often enough to know what our weakest places are. But this battle is not eternal. One day he will be thrown down forever. Scripture reminds us: “It has come at last—salvation and power and the Kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down to earth—the one who accuses them before our God day and night” (Rev. 12:10).

Until that day comes, we need to keep reminding each other of what’s true. That’s why our confession isn’t relegated to our times with Jesus. That’s why we invite people into our hidden places; that’s why we tell our safe sisters about the secret shame and lies we’re so prone to believe.

In community, we can confess to each other, pray for each other, and remind each other of the truths Christ has spoken to us in His living Word, the truths we’ve learned through our personal meditation. By reminding each other of these truths, we find healing in Christ through each other. We remind each other that we are loved just the way we are, and that shame and lies only thrive when we hide, when we withdraw to our hidden places. Shame and lies cannot survive the light of confession.

Shame and lies cannot survive the light of confession.

But why is it important to confess our sins to each other? Surely God hears and forgives, doesn’t He? In James, we read, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16).

The word that James uses here for confess means “to say out loud, to agree.” Confessing to safe sisters takes away power from the enemy who loves to isolate us and keep us in the dark. There is also a fresh awareness of our sin when we confess to another. I can minimize my sin when I hold it to myself, but when I speak it out to another I face the serious weight of what my sin cost Christ.

I find the way Bonhoeffer reflects on mutual confession helpful: “A man [or a woman] who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. As long as I am by myself in the confessions of my sins everything remains in the dark, but in the presence of a brother the sin has to be brought into the light.”¹

There is freedom in confessing out loud to a trusted sister who will love you and pray for you and hold you accountable to the life you want to live. But I urge you to be wise. Be careful whom you choose to share your story with and confess your sins to. Jesus said, “Don’t throw your pearls to pigs! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you” (Matt. 7:6). In other words, don’t take what’s holy and sacred to you and give it those who may use it against you. That’s why I urge you to ask the Holy Spirit to guide you to the right women. When you find those safe sisters, you’ve found the place to continue to be saved, to be the authentic you. It won’t always be easy, but it will always be worth it.

Do you have a community of safe-place sisters? If you have those sisters who know and love you, who speak truth and hope to you when you’re in the darkest of places, then hallelujah that you know this immense blessing. If you don’t, I pray this will happen for you. More than that, I ask you to make this your daily prayer: “God, lead me into a community of safe sisters.”

Then watch and listen to His voice. He will lead those sisters to you. And as He leads women to you, ask yourself whether the women will treat your life with care and compassion, whether they will ask and keep asking questions until you’re ready to tell them the truth, whether they will love you no matter what. If they will, you’ve found your community of healing. Push into it.

Reflection

Something powerful happens when we confess our sins to each other. James 5:16 connects confession to healing, to making well again. That was certainly true for King David. When the prophet Nathan confronted him with his sin, it led not only to repentance but also to healing. This is how David described unconfessed sin: “When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long” (Ps. 32:3). He then talks about the peace and joy that returns to a clean heart.

Do you bare your true self before God in prayer? Do you also share your innermost secrets with a safe sister? God promises to be present, and He will be faithful in response to your courage.