We All Need a Safe Place

Imagine a place where you can hide yourself from the chaos going on around you.

A safe place, a place where the thoughts, the feelings and the circumstances of life can’t touch you. A place where conflict, anger, words that cut like a knife can’t reach you. A place where your failures, your successes, all the times you never got started and your things left undone can’t judge you.

We are all looking for a safe place. It isn’t just a place for teenagers and college kids who can’t cope with life.

We all need this place in our lives and we all go looking for it.

Where Do We Find This Place?

Some will find this place in drugs and alcohol, someplace to deaden the pain of what life is throwing at you, a temporary safe place where you can’t feel the feelings and can escape the chaos of your life.

Some will seek medical help and an all too willing multi-billion-dollar industry will subscribe some type of medicine to help you escape temporarily because they can’t explain to you without looking stupid that you’re looking for a safe place.

We’ll turn to food or healthy food to find that safe place. I love lemon yogurt with chocolate chips when I can’t figure out what is going on around me and the swirling chaos overwhelms me.

We’ll turn to hours in front of a television or hours on a trail running to attempt to find that safe place, the place where we don’t feel the confusion, fear, dread and almost swirling bouts of depression.

We turn to pets, more pets and anything that can distract us from the feeling that we are nearly out of control again.

We’ll turn to a house that looks like a tornado just went through the center of it or a fastidiously organized house that could be on one of those television shows we binge watch. We’re just trying to create someplace we feel comfortable and safe.

We all have our coping mechanisms but how often do we figure out WHY we have coping mechanisms? How often do we try to figure out what it is we are running from when we look for a safe place?

Do Our Coping Mechanisms Keep Us In a Safe Place?

Personally, I don’t want to pay somebody else to poke around in my brain so I poke around in my brain myself. When I am at that place where I know I can’t cope with the feelings and need a safe space, I go for a long, solo run in the mountains. I’m not sure whether it is the fresh air, the sounds of the brook splashing down the mountain near me, the crashing river or the wildlife I get to see, something happens to bring peace back to me. Every time I go for a run, I feel safer.

Temporarily. And then life enters the picture again and I find myself getting irritated and then getting depressed because I’m getting irritated.

My forever girlfriend, aka my beautiful wife, feels the same way. One of her coping mechanisms may be waking me up, because she began poking me at four in the morning on a holiday, sleep in until forever morning. She asked me where something was, I don’t even remember what it was and something flew out of my mouth that woke me up and got me thinking.

“When I need a safe place, I slide into the arms of Jesus.”

Where did that come from? And why?

Obviously, it came from years spent in the Word of God but what is the origin of this and why is this significant? That is where my mind kept going and why I couldn’t fall back asleep. I had to begin writing.

This is where my mind went this early morning.

Maybe We’re Asking the Wrong Questions

I want to propose that we are all like caterpillars.

Caterpillars are amazing creatures but they’re not the finished product yet. As cute as caterpillars are with their multiple legs crawling across a leaf. As soft as they are when you stroke them to watch them curl up like a ball, that is not what they were destined to become.

When a caterpillar reaches that point where it feels the need to change and become what it was destined to become, it crawls into a safe space. Now that safe space just happens to be a cocoon, all nice and snuggly in there I am sure.

This process of the caterpillar transforming into a butterfly or a moth is called metamorphosis. Most butterflies or moths stay in their chrysalis or cocoon for between five to twenty-one days. I read that in harsh places like deserts, some will stay in that safe place for up to three years waiting for rain or good conditions.

The butterfly or moth emerges from their chrysalis or cocoon when the environment is ideal for them to come out, feast on plants and lay eggs. (Sourced from Blue Sky Science)

Deciding to Change is the Beginning

So where does this put us? What is our chrysalis, our transitional state and how do we get there?

I believe we get into the chrysalis, that transitional state when we admit that we need to change to become who we are destined to be. When we stop running from change, stop trying to cope with the feeling that we need to change with one of our many mechanisms and just once and for all realize that what we are seeking is not escape but becoming, transitioning into who we were destined to be.

We’re not just placed on this planet to be a caterpillar or a worm. We may feel that way sometimes, but it isn’t true. There is a destiny, a person to become that is placed in each one of us when we are being knit together in our mother’s womb. That destiny, that person is who we are to become.

Unlike caterpillars, becoming the person of our destiny isn’t going to just take five to twenty-one days and we aren’t going to come out of our chrysalis, eat a bunch of plants, lay eggs and then die in three to four months. That’s probably a good thing because I’m not sure what they’d do with all the bodies if that were for us.

No, for us we are going to spend a life transitioning and becoming the people we are destined to become.

Where do we find our chrysalis?

So now back to the really important question. What is our chrysalis, our cocoon?

The answer just may be in a Psalm of David. In this particular Psalm, David finds himself in a place he often found himself. He was in a place of conflict, an army besieging him and war breaking out. And in this place, he said a couple of things that convince me that my chrysalis, my cocoon, my safe place is to be found securely just one place.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation — whom shall I fear? The Lord is my stronghold of my life — of whom shall I be afraid?” Psalm 27:1 (NIV)

Fear, afraid. Words we often feel. But the words before this are the words that bring comfort. Light, salvation, stronghold. Those are all words that bring security and assurance. The word salvation used here isn’t that churchy word though. It is the Hebrew word, Yesa derived from yasa, to save. Yesa is liberty, deliverance, help, freedom, welfare, prosperity. Basically, all the things we worry about and look for in all the wrong places are found right there in one person, The Lord.

It gets better though. David goes on to talk about the evil men who want to devour his flesh and the enemies and foes who attack him that stumble and fall. And then he goes on to his ONE THING.

“One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.” Psalm 27:4 (NIV)

What better painting of a safe place, that strong place where we can rest and become who we are destined to become.

It gets even better though.

“For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock.” Psalm 27:5

Are you looking for an escape, a way out, a safe place where you can calm your soul and just once and for all feel safe?

I’ve found that place and it is a place where I can snuggle into a cocoon in my days of trouble, where I can be hidden in a shelter of God’s tent, his tabernacle. When the flood waters reach out to swirl around my heart and make it a muddy mess of feelings and the current tries to sweep what little foundation I have under my feet, he sets me high upon a rock.

Safety, a place to rest from the wars raging in my mind and soul.

Safety, a place to metamorphize and become who I was created to be.

A safe place where I’m not judged and prodded and where I don’t find an escape mechanism because there is no fear big enough, there is no enemy of my mind strong enough and there is no shame deep enough that in the shelter of the Almighty I can’t change and become the person I was created to become.

So, in conclusion. Yes, you need a safe place. We all do. The challenge is that maybe we are looking for the safe place in the wrong place and we need to turn the eyes of our troubled hearts to the only safe place that is truly safe.

All Rights Reserved for Michael Horner