Happy Tuesday! Oh friends it has felt like a whirlwind lately, but I am so happy to have landed here today. This month we are each taking a look into whether or not it is “safe to be really me.” If you are anything like me, it has taken most of my lifetime to feel comfortable really being myself around people, including friends. I pray that as you read through the posts this month from each Facet, and our guest, that God will speak to you about the freedom that can be found in vulnerability and authenticity, even when it is scary. Take a look back at Jen’s post last week, and keep looking out for Tracy’s post and the guest post later this month.
I pray that as you read through this there will never be felt a sense of judgement either for the choices younger me made, or choices you (and I) may be making now. I pray that you see God’s grace in how He revealed the importance of vulnerability to me, and that He is somehow able to encourage you through this story as well.
It is Too Scary
I have spent a lot of my life fearing how I would be received by others. If I spoke how I truly felt about a topic, or dressed how I wanted, or liked what I liked, how would I be received? What if I was truly, wholly myself, all the good and the bad, and my friends just walked away? Would I ever recover from the rejection? I always want to believe I can get along with anyone, so part of me feels like rejection is one of the worst things that could ever happen.
Through my teens and twenties this fear of rejection led me to metering my vulnerability. I would open up to whatever level I thought would be safely received by the person on the other side. With some friends, I would get into deep conversations about likes, dislikes, spiritual struggles, but not the really deep and messy things. I matched other people’s levels of vulnerability, but only to a “safe” level. Never the truly hard things to manage on my own – the struggles, the addictions, the hurts. If I really opened up about everything going on in my mind, and heart, I just knew that I couldn’t be seen the same again. There was no way I would be loved the same. I would be too exposed. The risk of being hurt was just too much.
Reinforcing the False
My friends loved me. Well they loved what they knew of me, and my brain kept reinforcing the boundaries to my vulnerability: “that mess is too messy, stay where you are safe.” I assumed I would be loved less if anyone really knew all of me. Assumed… My heart mourns not trusting some of my closest friends to be who I knew them to be. What if one of my friends could have loved me like God loves me? What if they were able to show me the grace and compassion that He shows me? A wall may have crumbled. It may have been transformational.
I think, kind of like everything else in life, vulnerability takes growing into. The further I got into my 20s, the more people I met who were really comfortable in their skin. They were more open with “flaws”, “successes”, and “failures”. At some point in time, the Spirit in me realized I had to trust the Spirit in my friends. Maybe not all of them to the same degree, but I had to start somewhere. If I ever really wanted to be loved, I would have to stop labeling myself as unlovable. I would like to say that I immediately ran to a friend and developed a lifelong, perfect, deeply honest friendship where we never struggled, that everyone loved everything about me, I never experienced rejection, and all was rainbows, but the reality is I chose a path closer to “okay, maybe someday.”
Who Am I?
I have this journal that I started sometime around 2013. I had started opening up to a dear friend about some of my struggles to really feel like I could love myself, and believe I was lovable. Not really because I wanted to be vulnerable, but she had modeled it well to me, and I was desperate to feel different. I had spent so long allowing friends to love only the shell of me, that I believe only the shell of me was lovable. All I wrote in this journal were scriptures that described me from God’s perspective. Things like Isaiah 64:8:
But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
Psalm 139:13:
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.”
Or Genesis 2:7:
Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”
There were so many. Pages upon pages of intentionality, and truth. I knew most of them already, but the neat thing about the living word is that each time you read it, the Spirit highlights something else for you. There was something that happened when I read that scripture from Genesis this time. God breathed life into me. I could picture the breath going into my lungs, filling every crevice, flowing through my bloodstream. Nothing was untouched. Nothing was outside of His touch.
So what does this have to do with being really me? Learning to love myself, was integrally tied to allowing myself to be loved by others, and allowing myself to be loved by others was impossible without being willing to risk vulnerability. Every time I assumed someone would respond poorly, I was reinforcing in myself the lie that part of me was broken. It was like I believed there was a part of me that was untouchable by God’s grace.
Who Am I if I’m not Me?
This is the question I feel like the Spirit presses into me anytime I am struggling with vulnerability. “Who am I if I am not me?” God created me. He saw fit for there to be a “me”. If I am being anyone but me, then I am really trying to fit a mold God never intended for me to fit inside. I am assuming I know what those around me need more than He does. I am not Tracy, or Jen. I am Megan. The more I am willing to accept who God created me to be, the more satisfied I am with who I am. There has been so much freedom for me in this.
I don’t want to downplay the fear I had as I learned to open up to my dearest friends, the pain I have felt when I have been misunderstood or rejected, or the fear I still feel having just moved to a new city knowing I have a lot of “getting to know you” days ahead of me. That fear is real. The pain of rejection is real. But so is the loneliness and pain of never really being known or loved for who you are.
If this is something you are still struggling with, I pray that the Spirit will reveal itself to you in those around you, and that the Spirit in you will find the Spirit in them, and realize there is safety in that moment to try out being really you. If you are on the other side, and you are feeling somewhat comfortable in your skin, or maybe just a little brave, I pray that you will be the one to create safe space, dismantle the fear, and model vulnerability for your friends.
