The Buried Diamond

I talked to Bradley at length. Distracted by fear and confusion, his sense of worth was very low.

“You’re like a diamond buried deep in the ground,” I said. “In its present location, it’s fairly useless. It doesn’t fertilize the soil. It doesn’t brighten the landscape. It doesn’t see the light, which is what makes a diamond come alive. It’s just another rock in the dirt.”

“So what can I do?” he asked. “I feel so much fear and anger. I feel so alone.”

“You feel broken like something is wrong with you, so you simply bemoan your condition and feel endlessly helpless. You keep looking for your mission in life while you’re afraid and confused—and while you fail to see who you really are—so your quest is doomed from the beginning. There is nothing wrong with you. Let me repeat that. There is nothing wrong with you. You don’t believe that yet, but we’ll prove it.”

“How?

“We remove the dirt. We heal the wounds of your past. We dispel the lies you’ve been taught about yourself from birth. We finally locate the diamond—you, who you really are—in the ground. And suddenly everything is different. You can see the light around you. You can feel the light flow through you in a way that is not possible with other ‘rocks.’ You begin to chip away at the rough stone until it reaches the condition that diamond cutters call brilliant-cut—with numerous facets of particular shapes that maximize the light passing through the top of the diamond and result in exceptional brilliance.”

We are not broken. Who we are is simply covered with the fears, confusion, lies, and protecting behaviors that we learned from early childhood. Sometimes we’re buried pretty deep. But we can heal. We can feel the love of other people and of God. We can release all our pain. Really. And then we can see the diamond and begin the lifelong work of polishing, cutting, and even enlarging it.