Vulnerability is a tough area for me. It’s been pretty prevalent on my mind in the past week, and I’ve had to face it a number of times. My boyfriend and I wandered through this broken-down house taking photos the other day and it just reminded me of some things in my life. The way that the beams were exposed and the paint chipping away. Eventually someone will buy this house and either tear it completely down, or at least to the studs before repairing the damages. Isn’t that much how our lives are? God is asking us to expose our weaknesses so that He can come in and repair us from the floor up. If we try to keep our weaknesses concealed, eventually they can cause even greater damage after layers and layers of false stability.
Ever since I was a kid I’ve learned the art of steeling myself. I invested less into the people I knew, and therefore walked out with less hurt in the end. Moves became less traumatic, relationships became increasingly dispensable, and I took very few strong friendships throughout life. So why is it that I can’t get the faces of the Filipino children out of my head? Why is it that when I think for long periods about Moses, my eyes still begin to glass?
Since returning to the states I have noticed a difference. I can no longer enter a relationship or even conversation void of feeling. I am conscious of passion and pain in my own heart even as I speak candidly about my life. I recognize other people’s hurt and am willing to bear it with them. Tears have lost their negative and overly dramatic implications; rather they have gained a sincere essence in my life. I feel like God really was developing the compassion gifting in me while on the race, but coupled with that was the need for me to be vulnerable.
According to Webster, the definition says, “capable of being physically or emotionally wounded.” It doesn’t sound like so much fun, but can you imagine if Jesus had not been vulnerable? He would have been completely pompous and self-righteous, let alone not even opening himself up to death on the cross. He modeled the ultimate in vulnerability while here on earth. So it is with His example that I begin to open myself up to feeling, emotion, and pain.
It still amazes me, though. I find myself in situations recently that in the past I would have not allowed myself to be vulnerable in. I would have played the “I’m tough” card or just acted insensitively. Now I have become that person the gets all teary-eyed while trying to smile through it; the girl that gets choked up when someone shares a touching story. Honestly, I’ve always been susceptible to the Hallmark commercials, but now there are dozens of other situations that get me going. It’s still hard to learn, and God is still chipping away at the old me, but I feel like I have had a tremendous amount of growth in that area since last year.
