Intimacy.
Even typing that word gives me the creeps. With that word come images of creeping tentacles reaching out to catch it’s prey and strangle it to death.
It makes me think of cancer or some deadly virus coming to take over and ruin it’s host.
Intimacy has been on my mind a lot for the last month and a half since my team discovered that it’s my odd little buzz-word. I should’ve known when it first came up that it would be the thing that I would be dealing with next. I guess, in a way, I did.
When we first got to Vietnam this month, we were encouraged to dive deep into intimacy and build genuine relationships with those we would encounter here… that this intimacy with others would be a witness to the love of Christ that we aren’t really allowed to talk about in a closed-country. Even though it’s a word/concept that I’m highly uncomfortable with, I didn’t want to miss out on ministry here. I went for it. I made it part of my goals for the month. The gauntlet was thrown…
Over the week and a half that I’ve accepted this challenge, I’ve been having daily revelations and huge confrontations with this concept in my heart. To make a long story incredibly short: I had a teammate deliver some feedback last night that in the almost 5 months that we’ve been on a team together the most that she had gotten out of me was what she had to pry out of me during team time that day. She apologized that she hadn’t wanted to go deep with me because it was too much work. God was teaching her how to genuinely love people, and in that moment of hard truth I was faced with some startling realizations to how I approach friendship.
It was scary.
Today, our team time started with a bang and brought on an overwhelming stream of thought about why the word intimacy makes my skin crawl. Here’s my thought process:
snorkeling vs. scuba diving
I don’t think I’m a shallow person. I don’t think my relationships with people are shallow, and as I was thinking about this, I realized that I still operate in my safe zone: snorkeling.
Any time I’ve been snorkeling the water has been plenty deep. You could definitely drown out there, but there’s still a certain element of safety to snorkeling. You can even take off the life vest, hold your breath and dive down for a closer look at all of the cool critters present. That’s the level where I relate to people. I snorkel. That’s as deep as I’ve really wanted to go. It’s safe and familiar. There are enough brightly colored [distracting] things to keep us all occupied and temporarily fix our real desire to go scuba diving. Really, is it that much better? [yes. duh. hellooooo. you don’t have to go up for AIR]
After I had my snorkeling revelation, I saw myself as a scuba diver out in completely open deep water. It wasn’t the crystal clear cerulean of snorkeling in the Caribbean, but a deep dark blue with a shipwreck looming in the background. I started to panic. I finally understood what my best friend Casey tried to explain when she backed out of scuba certification a few years ago. She felt claustrophobic. It didn’t make sense. You’re in open water, how can you be claustrophobic… because the weight of an ocean is all around you, closing in on you and confining you to your wet suit.
In the open water you are completely exposed.
There is nothing you can hide.
Nothing is in your control.
Nothing is yours anymore.
That is intimacy: complete openness.
trust and the johari window
There’s this thing in psychology called the Johari Window. It illustrates awareness of self and others:
It fascinates me and scares me at the same time. That square of unknown to self and unknown to others. I really don’t wanna touch it… but I want to. What is my hesitation to opening up my façade as my unknown?
It was in the middle of this question that I realized something… All of this… is rooted in a lack of trust. I don’t trust people… not that much. I don’t even like being around people for long periods of time because someone, like me, is bound to screw things up (hello there, commitment issues).
What does this mean for how I view unconditional love?
Does this lack of trust in people mean that I don’t trust myself?
Does this mean that I don’t trust God?
How deep do I really go with God?
1 John 4:18 says: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
It looks like it’s time I ask God to make me perfect in His love. Knowing the problem is half of the battle. Prayer and surrender are key components to the other half of the battle.
What now? It's time to go scuba diving. In the words of Barney Stinson: "SUIT UP!"
