The Elephant in the Room

My sister Holly and I were discussing writing, and she noted that being a great writer involves painful honesty, and was perhaps ultimately too self revealing for most people to dare attempt. This is true. I think it is immediately evident when a writer is holding back a piece of themselves. Like the elephant in the room, it is too obvious an omission to ignore. Most mornings, God brings to mind some event from the past day or so, or even a distant memory that suddenly springs upon me with a message that had been lurking on the fringe of my consciousness.

But some mornings, the elephant is standing right in front of me, and try as hard as I can, I can't see beyond it. I think we all have those "elephants", those painful parts of our reality that we try to dance around. Sometimes we can shove them aside, to a corner of our thoughts and tie them tightly with laughter, or chocolate, new haircuts, new shoes, or busy-ness.... but they seem to invariably loose themselves.

I can't see around the elephant today. So I will just let it stand there, obscuring my vision of a beautiful fall day, and pray that God will shove it away for me.

Romans 8:25-27 (New International Version)

²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
 ²⁶ In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.