Covering What God Wants To Heal

Everyone has their own signature coping mechanism to deal with stress, grief, and the general chaos of life. Some people take the healthy route, like journaling, praying, or making a strategic action plan. And then, there’s me in my early twenties. I typed into Google’s search engine what I do to deal with stress, and it told me that I lean toward maladaptive coping, also known as the art of avoidance and denial.

Now, if you’re someone who faces your problems head-on, you deserve a gold star, and maybe a TED Talk. As for me, I am making progress slowly as I eliminate one denial at a time. I am a lot better than I was, but I still have a long way to go.

Let me paint you a picture of what denial looked like in my early adulthood. Please, step into my first car; a beautiful Mazda Millenia with leather seats and a supercharged engine. It was pretty and fast, and I was in love, until the car started to turn on me—literally!

First, the power steering fluid started leaking. No big deal. I became the proud owner of a trunk full of power steering fluid. Costco, here I come. I would stop mid-drive, pop the hood, top off my power steering, and get back on the road. More than once, I did this on my way to church, wearing a floral dress and four-inch heels. Can you see the cartoon bubble in your mind?

Then came the engine light.

Now, a rational adult might take the car to a mechanic. But I was in debt, and frankly, denial was free. So instead, I discovered a clever little hack… I would unhook the wires to my car battery to reset the electrical system. Boom! Just like that, the engine light vanished, and my peace was restored.

This became a weekly routine until the Canadian winter hit and I grew tired of resetting electrical wires in a snowstorm with frozen fingers. So I did what any resourceful, emotionally exhausted twenty-something would do: I put black electrical tape over the engine light.

Problem solved. Not really, but kinda.

That little yellow warning symbol? Gone. My car stress? Vanished. Out of sight, out of mind. Was the engine still in trouble? Probably. But I didn’t have to look at it, and that felt like a victory.

Now, here’s the thing about that electrical tape solution—it didn’t fix the problem. It just kept me from seeing the problem. The engine was still in distress; I had just ignored the symptom. Side note: The Millenia model has since been discontinued. No surprise there!

Covering Up What God Wants To Heal

Spiritually, emotionally, and even relationally… we can do the exact same thing.

God gives us “warning lights,” too. They might come in the form of anxiety we try to suppress, relationships that feel strained, exhaustion that no amount of sleep can fix, or a still small voice telling us, “your life and priorities are misaligned.”

But instead of being honest with God, we go full black-tape mode and ignore our heart issues. Maybe we even cover it with prayer, but it’s not transformative prayer, it is a keep-face-kind-of-prayer, hoping no one will discover what issues lurk beneath the surface of our façade. Also, speaking from personal experience, we can distract ourselves by scrolling social media, binge-watch shows, or creating a jam-packed schedule that we don’t have time to think about anything other than the task at hand.

But here’s the truth: God doesn’t just want us to function—He wants us to flourish. He wants us to be overcomers. Flourishing doesn’t happen when we cover things up. It happens when we bring everything, yes, even the messy dashboard of our hearts, into the light of His presence.

Psalm 139:23–24 says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

I love the Psalms of David; they are raw, honest, and beautifully poetic. Invite the Lord into your life today, allow His spirit to run a spiritual diagnostics test, and be honest. Pray, “Lord, I’ve been pretending everything is fine, but I know that I have things I have tried to hide, can you bring healing and renewal into my life?”

Dear reader, it’s time to take the tape off the dashboard of your heart.

We weren’t created to live in a constant state of spiritual malfunction, pretending the warning lights don’t exist. God already sees them, not with judgment, but with compassion and a desire to heal. He’s not intimidated by what’s under the hood of your heart, He desires to do a restorative work in your life.

Healing begins where hiding ends

Trust that every light on your dashboard is just another invitation into deeper healing with Him. It is so difficult to face things head-on, but there will be such relief when the problem is not hidden, but resolved.

So today, let’s choose honesty. Let’s be brave enough to face what we’ve been avoiding. Let’s trade our temporary fixes for lasting freedom. Denial may feel easier in the moment, but true peace comes when we surrender to the One who already knows every hurt, sin, and shortcoming, yet loves us fully.

Devotion written by Angela Overton for moretolifetoday.net