“The first step toward finding God, who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.” — Thomas Merton

Years ago, a popular children’s movie centered on a young dinosaur whose mother is killed by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, leaving him an orphan.

I had taken my sons to the theater to view it and am relieved to say I was not the only adult who cried. Later, when the movie was released as a video, I rented it thinking my children would enjoy it seeing it at home. But in a moment of total honesty my youngest said, “I don’t want to see that movie again. It makes me very sad. It makes me think that you might die and I would be all alone. That makes me feel afraid.”

Wow. It is no wonder that Jesus said, “The Kingdom belongs to such as these” – little people with voices of honesty, sincerity, self-acknowledgement. Me, on the other hand?

During the saddest part of the movie I suddenly feel the urge for a cup of tea and conveniently leave the room, never admitting that the death of the mother dinosaur brings me to tears every time because I had recently buried my own mom and the grief was eating away at my heart.

I was trying to keep my pain from my children when, in actuality, we both would have grown from the inevitable exchange of hugs had they seen my tears. I suffered in silence.

My youngest son, however, was much wiser than his mother, and, even today as a young adult, continues to teach me about the importance of openly acknowledging and sharing the deepest of feelings.

Once, when I was dealing as quietly as possible with a debilitating illness, this son came into my bedroom and knelt down next to my bed. He looked me in the eyes and said, “I know you’re going through a difficult time now and I just wanted you to know that I love you.”

At the often “clueless” age of 13, this young man had cut through the simple offers of bringing me food or tea or doing some chores and had struck my heart with the words he seemed instinctively to know would heal.

My deep appreciation of his selfless expression of love and acknowledgement of my pain made it clear to me that, as a woman accustomed to giving continually of herself, I now had a need to be cared for; a need to hear that I was valued enough to be loved.

Author Paul J. Donadue explains in his book “The Jesus Advantage,” that acknowledging such feelings is scary, humbling – and healthy: “When we admit and share our feelings, we are revealing ourselves to ourselves and opening ourselves to someone else. As we express our feelings, we see ourselves more clearly, and we allow ourselves to be known. Our feelings are our inner world of joy, pain, doubt, elation, anger and fear. We can withhold this inner world from ourselves at great cost to our integrity and our mental health. We can also withhold this world from those we love. In doing so, we deprive ourselves of needed understanding and of intimacy; we deny those we love of our true selves. Identifying and expressing our feelings is not self-absorption. Rather, it is honesty and it is love. It is also difficult.”

This is not a discovery made only recently. Thirteenth century mystic Thomas A. Kempis, author of “The Imitation of Christ,” was one of many saints and theologians who understood the sacredness of human emotion and self-understanding.

He wrote: “A humble knowledge of oneself is a surer road to God than a deep searching of the sciences.”

I sure hope God doesn’t mind the occasional detour.

Morrell is a freelance writer and pastoral communications consultant working from Ortley Beach. She blogs at http://wellspringcommunications.typepad.com/god-talk-and-tea