Intimacy with God is a big deal when being a follower of Christ. It is what sets apart the body of Christ from any other religious person or group in the world. Intimacy with God is not about following rules or doing things just right, it is about relationship. What that means is that we have to tear down the walls around our hearts that have separated us from that intimacy. We all have things in our past that have hurt us and made us want to build a separation between us and the hurt, which puts walls between us and God and the people in our lives. Intimacy is not safe, though. C.S. Lewis puts it this way, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable… The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the dangers of love and intimacy…is Hell.”
Throughout my life I have run away from intimacy. If anyone gets too close I make sure to cut it off. I seem to go through stages where I have many friends, but if anyone gets too close I go into isolation. It has become something my friends know and joke about. Though I joke right along with them, it is something that hurts. I know it is a pattern in my life, but how do you stop the continual cycle? This week I choose to drop the “fig leaf” that I use to cover myself. I dropped the isolation, control, and the “I’m OK” attitude that I use to try and “hide” from God and everyone else. I choose to let God cover me. In all of this I realized that a root of all of this was in my sister’s death. She died when I was 10 years old. It was something that hurt me really bad, but I never grieved her death in a real way. I was afraid to cry around people and to show my weakness. In a very short time I became very good at always being OK. If I was in control of my feelings, then no one could hurt me like that again. In all of this realization I became aware that I had an even deeper longing to let that wall around my heart crumble. The isolation, control and “I’m OK” attitude does not work and leaves me miserable and aching to just be real with people and especially with God. I know it will be difficult not to revert to my well-built defense mechanism. As friends and family who are coming alongside of me, please hold me accountable. Do not let me forget that God is trustworthy! Pray for me! Don’t stop there, though, look deep into your heart and ask God what is keeping you from a deep intimacy with Him. Let me know how I can pray for you. Together we can fight for relationship that is real and intimate!
