Why do we feel the need to hide things from each-other?
Is it because we can’t understand how others would accept us if we can’t even accept that thing we want to keep on lockdown?
Or maybe it’s because we feel that the moment our vulnerability hit’s the surface everything will fall apart?
Is it that we are so comfortable with the facade we’ve created that even telling the slightest truth about where we are in life would risk abandoning all strongholds against pain?
Over the past two weeks, I’ve actually had beneficial conversations with my friends. Is that saying that all other conversations we’ve had throughout the years haven’t been beneficial? Not quite. But they’ve been real. Why? What changed in the past two weeks?
Vulnerability.
The past two weeks mark the first two weeks of my life that I’ve actually been completely transparent with my words, my thoughts, my feelings. You see, I’m tired of just saying “okay” when someone asks me how I am. I’m tired of walking away from conversations, where I’m expecting to have all of my problems addressed, and feeling just as exhausted as when the conversation began. How is someone supposed to be there for me if I am hiding away the things that drag me down?
I have been single my entire life. Through high school it felt like an embarrassment. In college, I found friends who could relate and the embarrassment faded into more of a burden. That burden you carry when you hit your twenties and everyone around you is finding someone. Friends would tell me how great that was and “oh the guy you end up with is going to be amazing. You’ve waited so long, he has to be.” As awesome as that is to hear on the surface level, if I’m being real now, that never actually made me feel better. It made me feel like some pity case.
So I took their comments (which I’ll say right now honestly all came from a good place), and stuffed them down and walked away. I would joke about my singleness sometimes, but it was just another way to pull the attention from the fact that this actually was something that bothered me. It was something that daily made me feel like I wasn’t good enough.
At training camp I heard story after story of the pains people had been forced to work through due to poor relationships. Night after night I would talk with someone who had been shamed in a relationship.
And I was still embarrassed to share that I’d never experienced that. Because I’d always been single.
The day came, however, when all cards were on the table. I told a group of about 15 that this had been a constant source of shame in my life. In that moment, it struck me that my relationship status was not something to be ashamed of. In that moment I realized that Satan had been using it and twisting something that is perpetually beautiful into this disgusting source of shame. For years he had been whispering that I was the only one who felt like this. For years he had been telling me that if anyone knew it would be the end. That clearly the reason I was alone was because I was unwanted. .
He is the King of lies. He cannot speak that which is true.
It took me stepping onto the edge and allowing others to see me, to get the freedom I had been desiring the entire time.
The freedom that came only when I realized that I was wanted.
What a different world it would be if this is how we faced each day. If when we got up in the morning we looked at ourselves and said, “today I will be me. Nothing less.” Today I will stop hiding behind fear. Today I will use where I am as a tool for the better. Today will be the day Satan no longer tells me that I am alone. He will no longer whisper that I am unaccepted. Because I am accepted.
Vulnerability is a tricky thing. It is something to be earned. I would’t share every little piece about this struggle with you if it was’t something I felt comfortable doing or something that I felt you as a reader had earned.
But oh the reward I feel walking in vulnerability in my conversations! It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I encourage this SO much! Specifically, I want to speak to my generation.
We are still living as generation where it is bad to be too honest. But can you imagine the world we could live in if we were exactly that?
So here I am. I’m 22. I’m single still. I’m going on the World Race. I’m going to walk with my Papa for 11 months, and I’m going to be in a relationship with Him from here on out. Because He’s earned my vulnerability, and I’m tired of hiding from it.
