I turned on the radio today and a woman was talking about CS Lewis. There are two surefire ways to catch my attention. The first is to offer to watch my kids so I can nap. The second is to mention CS Lewis.
She started to talk about God and how we are called to be childlike. She mentioned the qualities of children that we often think of – wonder and awe. And then she mentioned that children cry easily when they are sad. They show their emotions. They aren’t afraid to be vulnerable.
And that’s an interesting thought.
How open are you to being vulnerable with people?
I’m not good at it at all. But on the other hand, there are very few things in this life I crave more than honest and vulnerable relationships. I crave it so much, in fact, that I’m willing to be vulnerable here on the internet hiding behind a computer screen to make up for the fact that I have a hard time with it in my real life relationships.
But I’m getting better.
I think denying our vulnerability comes at a deep price. Possibly a price that in the end becomes too painful to pay.
Because we are a vulnerable people. We were created for unity with God. We weren’t created for this land of exile. We were created for happiness and harmony and loving relationship. Our fallen nature likes to convince ourselves that we don’t need anyone else, that we don’t need God.
But that’s a lie. It simply isn’t true. It’s not true for the strongest of us any more than for the weakest. It’s not true for the most dependent or the most independent. We cannot survive without God, whether we admit it or not. We weren’t meant to survive without community either.
And somewhere deep inside we recognize that. We recognize our frailty and our neediness and we try to hide it behind a shield of distance and a facade of perfection.
And every single time we do that, we are telling ourselves that who we are at our deepest core, our humanity, our vulnerability, is a source of shame that we need to hide.
But what if we broke free from that? What if we tossed aside the idea that we don’t need others and that we can get by without burdening others with our needs or our imperfections or our weaknesses? What if we let people see our tears or our messy houses or our impatience or our occasional need for help? What if we tossed aside conversations about the weather (crazy though it may be!) and children’s sports schedules and instead talked about what is on our heart, what touches us most, what makes us most human?
And what if we stopped telling ourselves that it is noble to pray for others while we refrain from burdening Him with our own needs? What if we stop pretending that we can do it all without God?
This vulnerability would be scary because we know that if we show our true parts, it’s our truest parts that might get rejected. And we worry that if we trust God, he will show Himself to be unfaithful. (He won’t.)
But I can tell you that writing pieces like this makes me feel very vulnerable. It makes me afraid of what people might say. It makes me afraid of sounding like a weirdo.
But then I look in the mirror and I realize that I am an overly emotional, intense weirdo. And I think I’d rather be derided or laughed at for that than loved for being a strong suit of armor that hides the deepest parts of me.
I’m weak. I cry a lot. I fear every day that I’m failing my kids and my husband. I’m not always very disciplined. I am starting to believe very deeply in God, and the more I believe in God, the more I feel convicted that if we know Him there’s no way around living for Him. I worry I’m not enough. I worry there’s something inherently broken at my core. (There’s not.) I’ve spent a lifetime trying to learn to love who I am. Or at least accept who I am. At least live with who I am.
It’s not pretty. But it’s real. But I’d rather go to God with who I am rather than try to put on a mask and hide from the One who truly knows me. I’d rather bring my brokenness to Him, the only one who can heal it with His presence rather than fight through it on my own anymore.
And I’d rather do the same with the world too.
Maybe deep shame needs vulnerability to heal. Maybe we all need vulnerability to heal.
Maybe the true balm for what ails us all is a willingness to be vulernable.
Vulnerability is beautiful.
Even, especially, yours.
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