Hidden Secrets
I was just a little girl, and my intentions were so pure. I just wanted to take one of my grandmother’s beautiful roses to my teacher at school. Grandma helped me cut the rose and wrapped the stem for me.
The part that neither she nor my mother knew about was that I had gotten one of Mom’s vases, and I secretly put the rose in the vase and proudly took it to school.
The vase was beautiful to me. It was fine china and had a woman’s delicate hand sculpted as if holding a delicate cup. To my eyes as a child, I thought it was perfect for carrying a rose to my teacher.
My teacher talked about how beautiful the rose and the vase were and she put them on her desk for all to see. She must have known that the vase was of some value, because at the end of the day, she placed the rose in another container and told me I needed to take the vase back home.
Everything was going great until I stopped to play on the way home from school and sat the vase down on the sidewalk. A short time later when I started to pick it up, I bumped it and it fell over breaking into two pieces just above the woman’s hand.
I carried the pieces home, got out the glue, glued the two pieces together and put the vase back in the spot it always sat. The glue line was only slightly detectable, and Mom never used that vase for flowers, so she never knew it had been broken.
But I did.
Years passed and occasionally I would look at that vase and think about what I had done. I kept a hidden secret from my mother. When I would visit my parents in their home, there sat that vase.
One day as she and I were sitting in the living room talking, I walked over and picked up the vase and told her the story about how it was broken and how I had fixed it. The weight was lifted from my shoulders.
She had never noticed that fine line, and by this time in her life, she really didn’t care about it. In fact, I don’t think she ever really cared about that trinket. We had a good laugh about the incident.
I still have that vase. My mother passed from this life almost nine years ago, and I still have that vase. (It’s in the picture at the top of this article, in fact.)
Why? As a reminder.
It reminds me that guilt is powerful, no matter how insignificant the wrong.
It reminds me that confession is liberating, no matter how much time has passed.
It reminds me that even though I may have hidden secrets from other people, they are never hidden from God.
It reminds me of my mother and her forgiving spirit.
It reminds me that God is always willing to forgive those wrongs for which I repent.
That tiny line in that vase reminds me that the vase is no longer perfect, but the wrong I had done is wiped away. Just as my mother in her love for me forgave me, so also will God in His love forgive me when I have done wrong.
What is it in your life that reminds you of the blessing of forgiveness for hidden secrets?
“…as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us.”
(Psalm 103:12)
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AUTHOR: Donna Faughn
