Becoming Known

Life is hard....and there's a whole lot of us just trying to survive these days... to make it through without getting injured or injuring others.We wear our scars hidden, covering them up in shame.But healing comes when we expose and allow them to be known.I was sitting in a counselor's office the other day doing a bit of that myself. Because if we don't heal the hurt it ends up hurting us and others too.Anxiety I've battled for so long, I thought I'd beaten has been whipping me lately. Most the time I don't like to speak of it.I blame it on the busy or the stress. It somehow sounds a little less shameful.But this year as the holidays are unfolding I realized a consistent theme and decided to get curious ...It's funny how sometimes we think we aren't broken up enough to need help, but truth is we're all carrying a whole lot of it around these days.Our chests tighten from the pressure within while we tell ourselves to just keep on breathing. But whether I give it words or not it still exists...Many times we don't want to appear broken, yet there's something inside us that desires to be seen and cared for.Did you know the Hebrew understanding of 'knowing someone' attaches itself to the idea of caring for them?I just learned this...and it's blowing my mind!{thank you lisajobaker@outoftheordinarypodcast}You see, most of us just want to be known and cared for without revealing ourselves.We want our pain tended to, acknowledged and to be loved through it...but we are so afraid of how we might be sized up, so we resist speaking it. Are you known like this?Perhaps it begins....when we choose to push pause on our busyness and press into another's heart. I want to live like this...And I'm learning when I do---layers get peeled back and souls get seen. Courage rises and warriors get birthed.The times I've felt the loneliest in my life was during bleak seasons of isolation when for one reason or another I didn't vulnerably expose myself. Times I even tried to hide from God...Truth is<>-I've spent more years hiding than choosing to be seen.-I've believed there was greater protection in secret spaces than inside sacred community.-I've shamed myself when what I really needed to give myself some love.-I ran away when I needed to be embraced.God has been letting me see the beauty that grows in healthy spaces of vulnerability.He's showing me the refinement of His Spirit seeps into the deep spaces of my soul and has the power to restore.I am finding my worth in being truly known, loved and cared for by God.Sure love still comes with a great risk, but the un-breaking of our soul allows us to be known and cared for.There was a lie that was strewn across the landscape of my life...I was told to never tell. They were the things you didn't speak of. But this is a trap of our enemy...he'd rather keep us sunk in untruth, shackled to our past than for us to be known. And we believe if we don't speak it, -if we bury it far enough below, it'll die. But friends, this isn't true.When shame is given words, it loses its power and beauty grows where brokenness once lived.These days--- I'm choosing to live in the tender places of authentic love, cultivating life rather than letting things die...seeking truth instead of lies, because in the end I'd rather be known than never be found every.single.time.