The Cost of Being Loved
“Holiness, not safety, is the end of our calling.”
-Lilias Trotter, Parables of the Cross
It is a strange and blessed thing when the person with whom you share a home, British dramas, dirty dishes, and breakfast burritos is also your pastor. So many people never get to see their pastor “in real life” on the mundane Mondays after church. But I do, and I’m glad. I watch Drew like a hawk and I can say with confidence: he’s the real deal. The intimacy and trust that comes from a day-to-day life shared together is what keeps me in my seat on Sunday mornings, genuinely open to listening to God speak to my spirit through him. And this past Sunday brought the weight of discovery that has sunk to the depths of my soul, refusing to budge until I reckon with it. Drew’s sermon on Psalm 35 opened my eyes to how difficult it is for me to be vulnerable with God. I’ve suspected this for a while—that God is inviting me to go deeper with the Trinity, to trust more and pretend less—but I’ve resisted, telling God I’m doing just fine. Perhaps my resistance is because it is hard for me to vulnerable within my own self, to truly name and share my deepest needs and desires and appear less than perfect while doing so. When prompted to come before God with all my mess, I point God to my blog and politely suggest, “Aren’t I getting it right? Isn’t communicating about you enough?”
As someone who has lived under the pretense of vulnerability for years, I know that it is quite possible to be open without being vulnerable. True vulnerability is costly because it requires an openness to being wounded. I’m quite talented at giving the pretense of vulnerability while staying safely snug in the triple locked panic room of my heart. But living as though safety and vulnerability are synonymous is just another form of self-deception, which means that the times I perceive myself to be spiritually healthy are often the times I am most unhealthy. What I experience as a neat and tidy faith life where everything is in order and I am doing fine, just fine, is actually a perversion of spiritual growth. I relate to God as my supervisor or tour manager and attempt to maintain a professional, arms-length relationship instead of an intimate friendship. My prayer life dwindles to a single request: “Just tell me where to go and I’ll be there. Also will there be snacks and a place to sleep and at least enough money to make it to the next tour stop.”
I am so willing to be used by God but absolutely terrified to be wholly, irrevocably loved by God.
This is tragic, because the ‘use-me-but-give-me-just-enough-so-you-can-keep-using-me’ dynamic is actually that of an abusive relationship—not a mutual self-offering like the love among the Trinity. This ‘use me’ dynamic is the broken plea of a heart that has been hurt and betrayed, having more to do with control than intimacy. And I have been both abused and betrayed. In my previous marriage and even sometimes today, the false belief I cling to for security is this: If I can control the terms of our relationship—even a harmful relationship—then you can’t hurt me.
Being loved requires being vulnerable. And sometimes it is easier to be used than loved.
Deep down, am I afraid that God will abuse me, take advantage of me, and humiliate me too? Maybe (yes). But that is not something I would ever admit to the upper 3/4ths of myself. There are wounds and lies that take long days of quiet to rise to the surface, and it has been quiet lately. In the quiet, God has been gently removing the thick armor of self-protection and surface-level vulnerability, but it hurts. It hurts to acknowledge that I do not have thick skin. I am all too woundable and permeable. I leak with tears and blood and sweat and sometimes my eyes burn with keeping the tears in. My throat strains with restraining the untamed cry of one who is frankly angry that she cannot keep it together and is terrified to admit how lonely, needy, and helpless she is.
In a moment of God-prompted vulnerability, I brought this ache to God. The following blessing is what I think God had to say about it all. Maybe I’m not the only one who needs to feel safer in their own skin to risk, to trust, to be vulnerable with God and others, to put the armor down and put your arms up in supplication, in embrace. If that is you, you are not alone.
A blessing for one who longs to be vulnerable but is afraid of the cost:
I stand at the door and knock, but I wonder if you hear Me.
I wonder if you even want to open the door to Me, or if you’d rather stay inside the comfort of predictability, drowning out My wild and winsome call with static and whatever else you choose to deaden your soul.
It’s okay to have thin skin, for I am your clothing.
I know that you are scared—of failing, of not having what it takes, of falling into deep depression again, of your marriage ending again in a way that terrifies you to imagine, of losing yourself and falling apart and not being able to pick up the pieces.
But listen, listen:
You do not have to hold all the pieces of your life together, because I am holding you.
Practice handing over one area of your life at a time to Me, piece by piece. I know this is hard.
But I promise I will not withhold one ounce of goodness from you. I do not remove something from you without replacing it with something much better. And that ‘much better’ is Me.
Am I all you need? Or is there someone, something else you cling to for importance and security? Is there a chance you’ve satisfied yourself with stale breadcrumbs when in actuality, I’ve prepared a feast for you? Come, sit at My table.
You do not need to knock before entering the vast home of My love.
There is room, much room, for you—and you have all the rights and privileges of a beloved child.
Even if you are not open to Me, I am open to you. Always.
My love is not conditional or dependent on how well you think you’re doing or how close you feel to Me.
I am closer than your skin.
I am the clothing that covers you, the wind that kisses your face and plays with your hair, the morning birdsong in your ears. I am GOOD—if you only knew. I invite you to My table just as you are—feeling inadequate—to taste and see that I am good.
And you know what?
I will stand at the door of your heart and knock until it feels safe enough to let Me in—to trust Me. Begin with tasting My goodness and feasting on the abundance of My house, and the rest will follow.
I will meet your every need—even the ones you cannot put into words because they run too deep.
Will you stop struggling and let yourself be loved?
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it 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. To love is to be vulnerable.
―C.S. Lewis,The Four Loves