In the Closet: Essays on Keeping Secrets with God in a not-so-secret world
Essay 2
Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.
-Sean O’Connell, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
My friend, Megan, likes to remind me I have an extreme ability to keep secrets. I had forgotten, but one time toward the end of my fourth pregnancy, I realized my little sister who lived two states away did not know I was even pregnant. I texted Megan for advice: Would you be upset if your sister didn’t tell you she was pregnant until she had a baby?
It was an unequivocal yes. Yes, she would be upset.
It might seem absurd, but to me there is something delicious about not sharing the tastiest morsel with just anybody. We lived for a time on a mountain where everything I did was a secret. For awhile, I considered regaling the beauty on Facebook. As I washed dishes in my kitchen sink, I looked out a window that framed a single peaked ridge, snow drifting down in perfect, fluffy flakes. It happened in an unending slow motion, a constant, breathtaking scene–God letting loose his storehouses, covering and purifying, bright enough to blind. The summer was no less magical–we stepped out onto a deck three hundred feet above the icy river which sourced our drinking water and sipped wine when the sun went down, listening to it roar over the boulders. Everything in creation was poetry to me, the pollen twinkling in the air mid-June, the fat yellow bees buzzing around my bed of flaming iridescent poppies, even the piles of poop the local bears left behind to remind us of our wildness. My kids were bred, born, and being raised mountain kids. We hiked sweet smelling mountains and splashed in the sparkling rivers, skied down our driveway, went sledding on marshmallow hills. In the evenings, with a bit of luck, my husband would get home from work early and I might go for a long run along the water at 8500 feet, sans strollers and kids. I revelled in it. It made the best kind of story that caught the most kind of attention–who wouldn’t be in awe of the wonder-filled life? Who could blame me for snapping pictures and wanting to share them? I could post a photo of the reservoir at sunset, the autumn aspens glowing and fruity pebble-reminiscent oak brush speckling the mountain, the still waters brushing the edges of the red cliffs, the silence of the thin air except for an eagle soaring a thousand feet above me.
It tempted me; it really did. If anyone had a picturesque life or reason to brag, I certainly did, no bokeh filters required.
But something kept me from spilling my secret life, the one that would have impressed all my highschool friends if I hadn’t gone off the record books for sixteen years. I honestly still cannot articulate it. My whys have never surfaced until very recently. All I knew was the intimate, giddy joy of keeping secrets.
The mountain life–cozy fires burning in the woodstove, majestic herds of elk crossing the twisty roads–I could tell everyone I know or I could keep it a secret to myself. The view from the kitchen sink? The bees and poppies and clear mountain streams? The truth is, they were bookended by some of the hardest years in our marriage. More than once I packed up my babies and toddler into their car seats and threatened to drive away forever. I might frame a great photo, but a liar I am not. I couldn’t bear the inauthenticity required to fake it. My photos, the proof of my perfect life, didn’t reflect the image of my desperate soul.
And so the joy and pain walked together, and slowly I learned I needed a shepherd and not an audience.
