Good and Perfect: Vulnerability, community, and being known

I have probably never felt as vulnerable as I did in January of 2010. We were under contract on a house and set to close on the one we were selling as well as the one we were buying at the end of the month. Our well-made plans were completely derailed when our daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor and we ended up spending much of that month in the hospital. We had a lot of people who loved us very sacrificially during that time, and a few of them got together and decided that they wanted to do everything they could to make our move possible, in spite of our impossible circumstances. The last time we left that house, we were only leaving for a few hours so that Adri could have a late night playdate with a friend in preparation for an EEG the next morning. It wasn’t in our plans for her to become unresponsive at someone else’s house or to be rushed by ambulance to the hospital that would become our temporary home for a couple of weeks. I was nursing my 4 month old at the time. By 3 am I was soaked in urine from a child who was rolled into the ER in my lap, in an unresponsive seizing state. I was in a lot of pain from the need to nurse or pump. I had no change of clothes for me or my child. And my mom who was keeping the baby “just while he slept” hadn’t gone to my house prepared to stay the night.

My mind swirled with everything that needed to happen just to make it through the next two or three days. Moving out of a house that had not yet been packed up seemed impossible. But some people got together and decided to serve us in a way that could never be repaid. Many friends spent many nights at our house packing every single thing we owned. I got more than one call along the lines of “sorry to bother you but could you give me your social security number; I’m trying to have your water shut off.” One night a friend left a message that she needed a key because they were trying to do some packing. When I got the message and called her back, she said, “don’t worry about it, we got in… I won’t tell you how.” Our contractor friends spent unpaid hours fixing the things that showed up on the home inspection. My girlfriends had packing parties where they loaded everything up. They cleaned out my junk drawers and my closet and packed up my underwear (but they covered it in paper towels so that the men wouldn’t see it… I still laugh about that). And then these same people came to sit with me in the lobby late at night after my child was asleep, with my messy hair and baggy eyes, so that I didn’t go completely psychotic in an ICU room all day and night. One of the community groups at church decided to serve us by paying for the moving van and loading our whole house up.

I left the house one night for a play date, and the next time I returned, it was completely empty.

I would call that experience forced vulnerability, where our circumstances left us very exposed and needy. There was so much blessing that came out of that. Prior to that month, I would’ve described us as very guarded people. We had good friends (obviously!), but we probably kept them at arm’s length. We weren’t secret keepers, but we also weren’t “I’d love for you to come pack up my underwear drawer” kind of people. We learned so much that month, about dependence (on people and God) and vulnerability. We really had no choice but to acknowledge our need and if not for the selfless love that was shown to our family, that move would not have happened.

I still tear up and feel overwhelmed by the goodness of God and the goodness of so many people – family, friends, coworkers, strangers – during that time. We were loved so well. What I learned from that experience is that there is a deeper level of love and bonding that happens when you are exposed and seen. What I didn’t learn was how to willingly and appropriately step out and allow myself to be known, junk drawer and all, when my circumstances didn’t force it.

When I was told that the book, Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, was about vulnerability and was to be read before a retreat I recently attended, my honest thought was cool, this will be great for some of these ladies. Maybe I can encourage them along. I wasn’t quite ready for what I would need to learn about myself.

The title of the book comes from a quote from a speech that Teddy Roosevelt made in 1910. I’ll paraphrase, even though I’m tempted to just quote half of the book because it’s so good. But basically Roosevelt said that the critic is not the one who counts. The person on the outside who has opinions but isn’t in the arena is not the one who gets the credit. The one who gets the credit is the person who is in there, covered in sweat and blood and striving even though he sometimes fails. And he wraps it up by saying that this guy, “… who at the best knows in the end triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…”

And so goes the premise of the book, that instead of being spectators and judging what other people are doing, we should dare to show up and let ourselves be seen. That might be in relationships or projects or work or creative ideas… but if we fail, let’s at least do it while daring greatly. Let’s not stand on the outside and never know what it feels like to try. With risk comes reward.

This idea can play out in many ways, but I think it is especially difficult in relationships. It’s easier to be guarded and to protect what is seen to the outside world, but don’t we all desire to be seen and known and then be loved anyway? To have those people who know your strengths and also your weaknesses? Who have seen your junk drawer? That level of love can’t be experienced if we don’t step into the arena and allow ourselves to be seen.

I believe strongly in the power of relationships and community – of give and take, life on life, serving one another and relying on one another. These things have been a formative part of our process towards spiritual maturity. But friendships don’t thrive if we’re always the dinner taker but never okay with being the receiver. And people that enjoy being the receiver but are never the giver feel needy and toxic and leave us running for the hills.

We all have armor that we use to avoid feeling shame, the emotion that we associate with vulnerability. Brown addresses these different defense mechanisms in her book. For me, the armor I resonate most with is numbing and oversharing. In my life, numbing comes in the form of staying too busy to have feelings. The problem with numbing is we can’t selectively numb emotion so when we numb vulnerability and shame, we also numb joy. We just feel less across the board.

As it relates to oversharing, I mistakenly believed that I was really great at vulnerability, because I am a chronic over-sharer (hence, I have a public blog where I spill my guts). But what I’ve learned is that being an over-sharer can lead to shame when you share yourself with someone that hasn’t earned the right to have that much of you. Being vulnerable and using vulnerability to force a connection or as a barometer for a friendship (ie, if you can handle my junk and stick around then we’re obviously BFFs) are not the same things. Since I experienced the depth of relationships that come from being seen and known through our experience in 2010, I have had a tendency to force vulnerability when it hasn’t been necessary or natural. That would be the opposite of being extremely guarded, and it is no healthier than the other.

Brown gives a gauge for determining who the safe people are:

When it comes to vulnerability, connectivity means sharing our stories with people who have earned the right to hear them - people with whom we've cultivated relationships that can bear the weight of our story. Is there trust? Is there mutual empathy? Is there reciprocal sharing? Can we ask for what we need? These are the crucial connection questions.

If the answer to these is no, then the result of being vulnerable ends up leading to shame when that person is not able to bear the weight of our story. She uses the example of blinding them with a floodlight. They wince and cover their faces because it's more than they are ready for. Then we feel embarrassed and shameful and want to withdraw.

I hate risk and I don’t like to feel vulnerable. But I crave deep relationships and those don’t happen without authenticity. In order to be fully loved, I have to be real enough to let myself be seen. I won’t believe in my core that the whole me, the real me, the uncool and contradictory me is enough if I only reveal the put-together me. That means being real enough to be seen but private enough to have the discretion to show that to those who have earned the right – not the spectators on the outside who are criticizing, but those who are in the arena with me.

Sarah Bessey explained this idea so well in a blog post this summer that resonated with me on so many levels. We have things that we want to share, but our tendencies can be to either say those things nowhere or to say them everywhere. Allowing our contradictory parts to be seen is the process of spurring one another on for good works. It’s community, it’s being the body of Christ, and it’s carrying one another’s burdens. There is power and healing and loyal love that comes from those experiences. But exposing it all to the ones who don’t mutually allow their own selves to be seen by you will lead to shame and a lack of trust. We have to find our Somewheres.

This was easier in college, when I had roommates who saw the ugly parts of me whether I wanted them to or not. Living with people automatically means we see the good, the bad, and the ugly, because no one can always stay hidden and guarded in their own home. As an adult, I believe that level of friendship is just as important but it requires more effort. In the phase of life I’m currently in, it looks like saying, “you asked how I’m doing, and the answer is that this has been a pretty hard week and I’m feeling guilty for yelling at my kids this morning.” Or being gutsy enough to say to somebody “I really need help in this area,” or “I need prayer about this thing that is very hard to share.”

As I’m learning to step into the arena and allow myself to be seen, it’s important that my true source of love and affirmation comes from something greater than my marriage or friendships or family bonds. No matter how much serving and being served and vulnerability and openness take place in an earthly relationship, there will always be a piece missing because both parties are broken. I can only dare greatly to put myself out there if I am comfortable enough with who I am in Christ when the person on the receiving end doesn’t give the response that I was hoping for. I have a responsibility towards the ones I love not to place expectations on them to provide affirmation that I can only receive as a child of God. But it is also important that I don’t use the truth that people are broken and only God can bring fulfillment as my excuse to put up a wall. If I do that, I’m missing out on the abundant life that is available to me on earth. There is so much more value in rich relationships than in things or experiences, and it’s because of our good Father that we are able to experience the fullness of those.