There must be a beauty in being misunderstood.
I’ll show you pieces of my heart. I’ll tell you thoughts of my head.
But that’s not all.
I could share my childhood with you, paint pictures of my memories with words. I could walk you through my teenage years and hope you would be able to feel what I felt. I could tell you of my hopes for the future. I could tell you of my dreams, even the crazy ones that seem impossible.
But that’s not all.
If you could put your hands into every nook and cranny of my soul, if you could run your fingers along the grooves that the past has made in me, if I could hold your hand and walk you through the lands of my life, maybe then you could understand me.
But I have come to see that it’s not possible. The corners in my soul that you cannot reach are reserved for the hands of my Creator. I’ve come to see that my intimacy with Him stretches wider and extends deeper than any kind of intimacy I could have with another human being. Our God is jealous and I believe that He designed us in such a way that He is the only one who can truly know us, in full detail.
We worship God in awe. We can never understand Him wholly. He is a mystery.
And now I see that I am a mystery too. So are you. This is one of the ways we reflect our Maker.
So yes, there is a beauty in being misunderstood.
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The above is what came out of my pondering what it means to be known. At the beginning of the race, I struggled a little with feeling as if my squad mates and teammates might never know the real me because the world race is such a unique context to meet someone in. In thinking about coming home I have struggled with the fear that my friends and family will not really get me anymore. I have experienced a lot these 8 months and I am changed. I’ve worried that I won’t be able to relate to my community anymore. But then I realized the beauty in all that. And I’m not afraid anymore.
