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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Vulnerability-Part Two

My friend Bethany has been doing a blog series about naming and it's importance these last few months. Inspired by her insights that she's discovering about herself, I wanted to write a little more on the subject vulnerability, because it's something that is my "achilles heel."

I've been pondering it tonight after House Church, that I feel in myself a drawing inward instead of a drawing out. I don't know if it is because work is so crazy, or because my finances are so crazy, that I feel this drawing in of myself. That my relational resources are spent and must be conserved to a very specific time frame of 6-8 on Tuesdays. That I want to ask questions about you, but only have time to care about me right now. If you come back and talk to me in several weeks, I might be a little less self-centered. That because my bank balance is small, my relational interactions are small and contained.

One of the things that we read tonight at House Church was the scripture from Matthew 6:1, the Message Version (say what you will about Eugene, it is interesting to read), "Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don't make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding." Something about it struck me. I've been pondering it since then H.C. tonight(and went to church and got my laptop to post at my apartment-hooray wireless).

I think that I am vulnerability challenged. I want to be the kind of person with whom people bring their cares and concerns, but I am not a person who brings their cares and concerns to others easily either. Does that make vulnerability a two-way street? When people ask me questions, I don't often reciprocate the questions, but I realize it until after conversations. I don't mean it to be this way, but I don't know how to right it. I feel relationally hungry and full all at the same time. I think that I play-act at things being good so that I don't know how to share the bad without it being ALL bad.

When I think back on times when I feel that I have been most "vulnerable," perhaps I have confused that with depression and moodiness and it was received poorly. I think that I have been told that sharing the bad was undesirable, that I have to construct a good front over crappy situations because that is who I am supposed to be.

So where does this leave me in my ponderance? I think, as I see myself wanting to draw into closer relationships with people, I am unsure of what it means now to fully embrace someone at the same time allowing them to fully embrace me. To truly be willing to lay all the "cards on the table," letting them peruse through them and waiting for the reaction and doing the same thing in return.

3 comments:

Ashley said...

this is such a good post. it is really hard to be vulnerable with people, especially when life is crazy and requires a lot of your focus and energy. i struggle with it a lot too...it seems much easier at the time to just say everything's fine. just know that we want to know the bad and the good and that sharing the bad is not undesirable...no one should have to bear the bad all on their own. that's what we're here for :)

Robert Prince said...

You know, I've read this a couple times the last week.... just pondering it. I myself often wonder about vulnerability. In my cases, I refer to it as my masks, which I always seem to have on. I guess vulnerability is just one of those masks maybe. It could be more to it than that I guess even, but one thing I know is that masks hide who you are. Some of the times we don't even know who we are simply because we have put on the mask so many times it has become more of us than we would like to admit.

One of the things I like to say is that We will never be who we could be if we aren't being who we are. I believe that God has put in us a dream and depth that only he knows and that we are only ourselves when we are letting him shine through us, but I believe that we can do that and even moderate it to some degree, when he is just saying "you know... if you would just be who I created you to be, you would be ministering to so many people".

Sorry, I hope this makes sense, some of it I hadn't even processed myself until now... as I'm writing it on your blog... maybe I should be doing this on my own, but I wanted to encourage you that we all have to fight for authenticity and really push ourselves toward vulnerability and be intentional about it, until the day comes that we have done it long enough and often enough that it becomes a part of us, not just something we do.

Robert

Jamie Lynn said...

Is there a part three to this? 'Cause, honestly, I'm ready for some more bliggity...