The place we keep avoiding
On fear, honesty, and the quiet courage it takes to heal.
A dear friend shared something with me recently. It stayed with me long after he finished speaking.
When he was a very small boy his family took him by train to a zoo in a large city. While they were standing in front of the monkeys and gorillas an electrical storm broke open above them. The animals began to panic. They threw themselves around the enclosure with a kind of wild, human-shaped terror. He has no memory of this moment, but his parents told him he was so overwhelmed that on the train home he tried to warn strangers about these “mannies,” as he called them, because they looked so much like people who had lost control.
That moment left a mark on him. He needed a night light for years after that day. He could not sleep without it. Even when he grew older he convinced his parents that his younger brothers needed it too. The fear had lodged itself deep inside him.
He told me that in the last few years, as he entered mentoring and deeper accompaniment, he found himself struggling to face some painful places in his own story. He had spent much of his life avoiding those dark corners. But there came a moment when someone said to him, “I am not afraid of your dark.”
Those words pierced through years of fear. They gave him the courage to look toward what he had always kept hidden. And only then did he realise why that sentence felt so powerful. All the way back to the zoo. All the way back to the night light. All the way back to a small boy who could not bear the dark alone.
This is the heart of relational healing. Someone stays with you in the places you fear. Their presence steadies you long enough to let the truth surface. It becomes a way of holding the Christ light for another person in the night-time of their fear.
In counselling and therapy and mentoring I see this pattern over and over again. People come longing for light, yet often exhausted from circling the same unspoken wounds. They know where the deeper work waits. They can feel it. But every time they approach it, something in them pulls back. The old fear whispers that they will not survive the truth.
Tolkien gives us a picture of this in The Hobbit. You do not need to know the story to understand the image. A small hobbit named Bilbo stands at the mouth of a mountain. Inside sleeps a dragon called Smaug, resting on gold that was never his. The treasure is good. The danger around it is real. And the path into that cave asks Bilbo to face something far bigger than himself.
Smaug becomes a picture of whatever we fear in our own hearts. The gold becomes the life and freedom we long for. And the mountain becomes the place inside us that we keep avoiding because it feels too dark to enter.
When people begin therapy they often speak in terms of what they want less of. Less anxiety. Less heaviness. Less confusion. These hopes are real. But beneath them is a deeper longing. A longing for a life where fear does not hold the final word. A longing for love that feels safe. A longing to rest. A longing to be fully known and not turned away.
That longing is the treasure. And the dragon guarding it is usually whatever we have not yet dared to face.
This is where relationship changes everything. No one walks into the cave alone. Even Bilbo had a company with him. Their presence helped him take the next step. Their belief in him gave him strength he did not know he had. In counselling or mentoring, the same truth holds. Healing unfolds through steady accompaniment. Someone sits with you in the darkness until you can breathe again. Someone stays long enough for courage to rise.
There will be moments in the healing journey when everything in you wants to turn back. Therapy can stir old fear. Honest accompaniment can touch parts of your story that were buried for years. You may want to retreat to familiar ground. But with a safe and trustworthy presence beside you, something begins to shift. The dark becomes less overwhelming. The truth becomes speakable. The old fear begins to lose its grip.
And slowly, you begin to see what you have been circling. You begin to understand what sits just inside your own mountain. You begin to feel the possibility of stepping toward it instead of away from it.
So perhaps pause for a moment and let yourself notice what this stirs in you.
- Where have you been turning away?
- What memory or truth sits quietly in the dark?
- What conversation keeps calling to you?
- What longing lies beneath your fear?
And what good thing might be waiting if you finally stepped toward it?
More peace.
More honesty.
More connection.
A deeper sense of who you are, in your true identity, as a beloved son or daughter of an all-loving God.
If something inside you recognises this pattern, let yourself acknowledge it. Not as pressure or shame, but simply as a sign that you know where the mountain is.
You do not have to walk the whole path today. You do not have to be brave all at once. You only need to take one honest step. Reach out. Ask for help. Allow someone to walk with you.
You were never meant to face your dark alone.
And the treasure hidden there has always been waiting for you.