the rambling missionary

by erika haveman

Being alone is the safety blanket I tend to wrap myself in.  It may come as a shock to you all, considering the honesty with which I write, that being vulnerable is a really hard thing for me.

It was about a year ago that I realized the difference between transparency and vulnerability.  Transparency has a lot more to do with allowing people to have glimpses into your life, but no real involvement.  Vulnerability is about allowing people to step through the glass and enter into life with you. 

I’m bad at that.  

What’s familiar to me are my walls.  Rarely do I really let people in.  Maybe we all actually function like this to a degree.  It’s ironic because we all crave relationship but it’s not so often that we do a great job of seeing that on behalf of one another.

I heard someone exclaim recently, “The people of Ukraine are relationship people!”  This was in the context of the person having just returned from a 2 month missions trip to Ukraine.  They shared that it took them a while to get to know the Ukrainians in the village where they were serving because ministry all came down to relationship.  

All of life comes down to relationship.  All peoples, everywhere, want relationship.  We were created for relationship.  Sometimes I wonder if the creation narrative would have been fine saying, “It wasn’t good for man to be alone…so God gave man a best friend.”  You know?  I mean I think the reason why we have specifically God creating a female and wife for man is to make a point about what marriage in what God’s creation should look like.  Often when I read the narrative I think all about the marital relationship – as I rightly should .  But really – what’s marriage if that person isn’t your best friend?  

Relationship denotes a knowing and marriage adds the opportunity for intimacy of a different level.  We don’t want sex; we want to be known.  I mean we want sex…but more than wanting sex we want to be known and truly, deeply known.

The reality is, I don’t actually want someone to know me.  I don’t.  It’s way easier if someone were to never be welcomed in.  Sure many of my close friends, and I know many of you readers, know a whole heck of a lot about my life, my choices, my history, my pain, my joys…  But true relationship denotes truly knowing…and I don’t seek that out too much. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t know if any of us could handle the emotional capacity of living so raw and vulnerable with so many friends, so I’m not suggesting making everyone your close personal best friend.  And living raw and vulnerable does not mean staying in a place of constant pain.  We can’t pour out our soul if we’re not willing to feel the fullness of pain and therein feel the fullness of healing.  You should not be vulnerable to manipulate a situation to get attention or to get what you want out of a situation.  But you should be vulnerable if you want to find healing – with others and with the Lord.

I wrote last week about my “flaws.”  I kind of made a joke about it, but on some levels I do often wonder if that’s the reason I’m still so unattached.  I start to genuinely think that I’m not enough, and no human deserves that, so that’s why God hasn’t gifted me to someone: I’m not much of a gift to give.  And don’t “aw, Erika you are a gift!” me because it’s patronizing.

One thing I’m reminded of, with my heart having found itself in a bit of a fragile state relationally, is that empathy is only useful alongside of discipline.  If there’s no discipline it’s just sympathy.  Maybe this isn’t a thing for everybody, but for me it definitely is.  When I would be real(ish) with most friends about my heart I’d get a lot of “aw, Erika, I’m really sorry.”  However when being raw with a couple really close, highly respected friends about the reason for my fragilitiy they gave me a very different answer.  They reminded me of who I was in Christ, to submit to selfless living and to be honest with the unfairness of the situation and be willing to confront the injustice.  Great advice…but confronting personal injustice is not fun.  I may be an 8 on the Enneagram, but my wing 9 holds me back from loving the idea of crucial conversations with myself – and even others.  I’ll try to initiate, but I usually throw up my walls and hide behind them and insist I’m fine – because that’s easier than actually admitting I feel hurt and therein make someone else feel hurt too.  I don’t want to do that.  I don’t want people to feel pain because pain hurts.  But I also know that I know that without feeling pain, truly experiencing the lowest of it all, I will never know the height of joy.

Jesus is the most clear, obvious example of this.  He took on the worst of pain – the wrath of God owed to the rebels of humanity (us) – took it to death, but then rose in glorious victory to sit at the right hand of God Almighty.  God is FOR me, not against me and nothing formed against Him shall stand.  Therefore when I suffer, cry, hurt, and know pain that is not imaginable behind all of my walls what I need to do is tear down those walls, let someone in and allow my pain to be seen and let someone be like Jesus to me.  Only then will my wounds heal and will I know joy at it’s purest, most beautiful and wholesome form.  Only then will I know what it is to be one with Christ.

So you’re right: I need to stop being alone.  I need to take off my safety blanket.  I need to let love in through allowing others to know my pain so they can offer the truth in love, or empathy with discipline, so I can know Jesus even more than I did before.