On October 16th I boarded a plane bound for Atlanta, Georgia to attend Training Camp for the World Race. I was so worn out at this point in my life I was only planning my life 24 hours in advance. So it was shocking to crash land in Georgia with all these excited people at training camp. A few days in, I realized this was going to be one of the hardest physical, emotional, and spiritual things I will have ever done. I ate eggs for the first time. I slept with huge spiders crawling on me at night. I took a bucket showers in October weather. We didn’t have basic things like toilets, sinks, and coffee. I wore all my layers at all times, even my sleeping bag sometimes. Each night we had “scenarios” for sleeping. Sometimes we “lost” or bags at the mock airport and had to bunk with our new friends, one night we were driven to the forest with tarps and some food, and my favorite night was when we got to sleep inside at the mock airport with a loop of airport sounds running. I seriously loved airport night, we got to be inside and I was so grateful to feel warm!
I rediscovered how much I love to run. We did a lot of dancing, and I am still unashamedly bad at it. People hugged me about every 20 seconds. And I sang until my voice was hoarse. I felt wild and joyful, like a kid in the summertime. And most of all I felt loved by God, something I had forgotten.
Everyday we had hours of training on both spiritual and practical topics we’d encounter on the Race. For a few days we drove deep into our relationship with God via our shame, vulnerability, and identify. We sat in small groups and poured out our shame and weaknesses with one another. Within those days, all the warning bells in my head were going off. Code Red: Abort. The little Saylah voice in my head was screaming “Run! Run! Ruuuuunn!”
Being vulnerable, sharing my shame with other people, are you serious? I can’t do that. What if there something about me, that if others see it, they won’t want to be my relationship with me anymore? And if I dare to risk and let people in, what if they exit my life? Doesn’t that confirm my deepest fear, being unworthy of love? Vulnerability scares me to death.
My shame is, I am never enough. My shame is I am not worthy of love and belonging.
And I’m probably the worst Christian ever. Because this higher part of my brain understands God is always enough. God always loves us and those who love him back always belong to him. But I don’t always act like it. On the most personal level, I was still wondering last week, is God still enough when other’s let me down? Am I still worthy to be loved by God when I let other’s down?
Vulnerability is our capacity to be courageous and confess to another person who we are and where we’re at. Vulnerability is taking the risk to let others see you. I loved when Brené Brown, a researcher on shame put it this way, “vulnerability is the most accurate measure of courage.” Our willingness to be vulnerable, is the only way to understand how far will go to love, regardless of the response.
I am passionate about the work I’ve gotten to do with Child Protective Services these last few years. But its a field in which there is never enough. I am never smart enough, strong enough, good enough, emotionally supportive enough, have enough time, enough patience, enough compassion. Being “never enough” has encoded itself into my identify. This is my shame, the stuff I have let fester in silence and isolation. And now I’m preparing to go out into a world of poverty like I’ve never known. Brokering for resources will take on new meaning when I am holding little kids whom dying of preventable circumstances. I could never be enough.
I’ve experienced this gut-wrenching fear of vulnerability in all of my dearest friendships. How much easier is it to impress people, put on a show and try to get them to love you? At the end of the day, you have to keep up this fake act of impressing others and the love they have for you is also fake. I believed that if I acted perfect, I wouln’t give people a reason to reject me. But as we’ve already established I am not enough. Shame is this loop of conflicting messages I foolishly try to make sense of. But I’ve broken through the facade a number of times, and in doing so experienced love.
But I’ve also been vulnerable and have experienced hurt. When we let people in our lives, when we are vulnerable, we give them free license to either love us or reject us. Vulnerability is the willingness to give up control with the hope of being loved. There are no guarantees. And sometimes these relationships do hurt us. I have stored up many voices of rejection from friendships over the years. I have let these messages shape me to the point in which when anyone speaks into my life I automatically search for the rejection. But when we aren’t vulnerable, we forfeit authentic relationships with one another. I suck at vulnerability, but I want it.
Jesus, truly was the greatest at being vulnerable. Creator of the universe, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, “who, being in the very nature of God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in the appearance of man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:6-8 NIV). Jesus was made himself as vulnerable as he could be, even until the point of a brutal death.
I think Jesus gets all the emotions around vulnerability. When I felt like I’m about to die when I am vulnerable with others, Jesus actually did end up dying. He knows, because his experience was the most intense in all of history. He was rejected by the world he created, and the world he loved. He was rejected by the closest friends he had while they watched him get beat up and crucified.
I believe Jesus is the Son of God. I really believe Jesus loves each and every person on earth. When he came to be the sacrifice for all people, the Savior, he did it out of intense love. His sacrifice was pure vulnerability. And all the world rejected him. I have known deep pain from being rejected by a few. I could never fathom the pain of being rejected by all the people you love. Jesus knows this rejection, abandonment, and pain.
Through processing all my thoughts about going on the Race, leaving my life here in the states, and being vulnerable with this new group of people, I heard God speak. Even in your shame, even when you screw up bad, even when you don’t feel like you’re enough, even when the world is falling apart, even when you let people in and they turn away from you, “I will always show up for you.”
God reaches out to us in love through his own vulnerability. We have the choice to love him back or we have the choice to turn away. I learned at training I had been rejecting God’s love because I was trying to “be enough” instead of being loved. Again I feel like the worst example of a Christian because I missed the main point. But I am done missing the point.
Who I am is not about being enough. Who I am is about being loved.
