18 June 2018

Trust Issues & Lone Wolves





            We all want to believe that we can face anything on our own.  Maybe God can help a little, but we certainly don’t want to need other people.  Like the toddler who wants to do everything herself, we feel we have to prove to ourselves and to everyone else that we are strong, brave, courageous, fierce, independent, self-sufficient, and grown-up.  Besides, other people come with far too much risk.  We’ve been down that vulnerable road before, and it didn’t end well.

            The trouble is God didn’t create us to operate as lone wolves.  He placed within us an innate need for deep, real, raw relationships – not just with Himself, but with other people as well.  Sin certainly makes relationships hard.  Some of us have been shaken to our core by the lies, betrayal, cheating, insensitivity, and manipulation dealt to us by the most unexpected of sources.  Only a small taste of such use and abuse can make the sheltered life of the lone wolf suddenly appear irresistibly attractive. 

            If that is where you are, I am genuinely so sorry for the very real and legitimate wounds that have brought you to this place.  However, can I encourage you not to give up completely on allowing yourself to trust other people and to be open with them?  Obviously, we need to have discernment with regard to whom we trust, and we don’t have to let the whole world see our entire lives.  Nevertheless, I’ve struggled alone and I’ve struggled alongside others, and I can tell you that the benefits of being transparent (even if it’s only with a few) far outweigh the risks associated with being close to other sinful people.  Here are five of the benefits I have found in allowing myself to be vulnerable:   


1.  Intimacy (Closeness)

       Relationships are built around knowing and being known.  The more we know, the tighter the bond between us becomes (even though the risk also becomes much higher for greater hurts).  Our unseen hearts, the truest depths of who we are, long to be seen and understood.  We want close bonds.  Close marriages, close friendships, and other close family relationships cannot exist where one or both of the parties refuse to be vulnerable.  If we hold back from being truly known by anyone else, we forfeit the closeness that we so desperately crave.       

2.  Ability to Help Others

       Being open about your own struggles provides opportunities to make a difference in the lives of those you may never have been able to otherwise.  Often, a gesture of transparency and trust on one side allows the other person to feel safe enough to reciprocate that transparency and trust.  Needs to which you would have been completely oblivious suddenly become rich opportunities for service.   

3.  Ability to Receive Help

       When we’ve been hurt, our natural instinct is to put up tall, foreboding, impermeable walls of distrust.  Those walls we build in an attempt to protect ourselves from more pain end up becoming our prison.  No one can come in to hurt, but no one can come in to help either.  Inadvertently, we lock ourselves away alone with our struggles where they can slowly eat away at us from the inside out – crippling us to the point where we don’t even recognize who we are anymore. 

Ecclesiastes 4:9, 10

 
4.  Strength for Your Weakness

       God made us with our own unique set of strengths and weaknesses.  No one is strong in every area.  When we allow people into our hearts and lives, their strengths can balance out our weaknesses so that we are stronger together than when we were apart.  We can learn from each other, keep each other accountable, and spur each other on in the areas where we are lacking.      

5.  Hope

       When I’ve tried to face trials alone, all I can see is the mountain in front of me and the fact that God has not chosen to move it yet.  When I’ve walked alongside others in the same struggle as a result of being transparent, I still see my own mountain, but I also see how God is currently working and moving the mountains that my friends are facing.  Seeing Him work in the lives of others gives me hope that He hasn’t forgotten me and that I will eventually see His work in my own life clearly.


I am so thankful for the many people God has placed in my life in different times and different places.  Yes, I’ve been hurt by some (just as I have hurt others), but those hurts cannot compare with what I’ve gained by allowing people into my heart.  I cannot adequately express just how valuable many of those relationships have been to me.  To all those who have walked with me (and are currently walking with me) in the darkness and the haziness that life sometimes brings, thank you for your vulnerability, for your transparency, and for your trust.  Thank you for being a safe place. To those who are reading this who have never experienced what it is like to do life with other people – real, raw, unfiltered life –  please find your people!  If you don’t know how, talk to God about it.  Talk to me about it.  Talk to someone about it until you can find your safe people.  We need each other, whether we like it or not.      

           


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