We are not being honest with God when we're churning out our best King James vocabulary, trying to sound unperturbed and unruffled and all righteous and holy. That's phony. Whom are we trying to fool, trying to sound so righteous before a holy and all-knowing God? He knows exactly what's going on inside us, even if we won't admit it. In those times we need to follow David's example in Psalm 6 and tell God exactly how we feel, even if we risk saying "wrong things." God invites us to share our hearts with him, to confess our sins and our fears and our insecurities and our worries, and then to ask him to change our hearts.

Part of gaining emotional health is to admit we're not healthy. We need to accept the fact that we are all emotionally fragile, that we need God and we need others. When I failed to do that, I wound up in depression. When I learned to be honest about my emotions, I discovered a God who had been waiting for me to share my heart.

Don't make the mistake I did. Don't make him wait for you. You can't afford it, and even if you could, why would you want to? That's a costly expense that buys nothing but grief.

A Grace Disguised - How the Soul Grows Through Loss. In one dramatic moment, author Gerald Sittser lost his mother, wife and daughter in a tragic auto accident. His journey through the val (more...)