I think most people’s lives are full of little secrets, don’t you? I can’t think of too many people who don’t have a few – who are completely authentic.

I started thinking about this when my grandmother passed away a few years ago. Over the months following her death, my mom and aunts cleaned through Granny’s room, digging in places only Granny had been. The dresser drawers, the boxes in corners, and the ‘off limits’ closet at the end of the hallway. Boxes and envelopes and pages upon pages of history, notes, pictures, receipts…. anything we’d ever want to know about Granny.

You know what?

After going through all of those personal, and sometimes intimately personal things, they didn’t find ONE ITEM that shed a negative light on her. No journal entry of frustration. No receipt of a questionable purchase. No love letters from anyone except her husband. No brow-raising books.

Nothing.

Only a plethora of pictures, notes sent to her from her kids, grandkids, and great grandkids, and Bible verses written on scrap paper.

All the ‘secrets’ that were unearthed about her after her death, weren’t secrets at all. They only confirmed that she was EXACTLY who she always seemed to be.

It doesn’t mean she didn’t sin or fail. She needed Jesus just like the rest of us – but she lived life in the real.

If people went through our ‘secret’ things, would the find what they expected? Would the pages of your journal or the corners of your drawers only prove to confirm who you seemed to be?

No matter how much we may try to hide the truth, God’s known us to our cores – all the way to our thoughts. He’s searched through the layers of our feelings, the shadows of our memories, and even sifted through our darkest thoughts. He’s not surprised – and although He might find things we’ve tried to hide, He loves us anyway. An AMAZING sort of love.