A safe place at the table

By Jennifer Salinas

You can love your life and your people and still feel the strange, lingering ache of loneliness in your bones.

It can be terrifying to feel the singular loneliness of feeling deeply unknown.

You can stand in a crowded room and wonder if you have always lived with that loneliness.

Real friendship says, “you have a safe place at the table – to lay your whole heart down”.

Safe people let you come unmasked, unafraid, unreserved.

Truly safe people let you come with your true self- and truly accept you. That’s rare. Because usually?

Usually people want their own agenda.

Sometimes we try to manipulate hearts to beat the way we want rather than letting their hearts communicate what they need.

It takes courage to listen to a heart exactly as it is and not try to manipulate its beat.

The world may feel broken. the headlines may feel loud.

Your day can feel like a minefield and the whole world around you can feel like it’s fracturing angry and polarizing and loud.

These days it seems that we are all parched for a safe place to rest. But God!

God is the One that will come and find you and remind you, and Jesus is the friend that will remake you when you are forgotten and broken.

He is the safe place when you have no place.