Vulnerability

Marriage has always seemed like a funny concept to me. Like, you just pick someone at random who seems okay at the time and then you promise to spend the REST OF YOUR ENTIRE LIFE FOREVER with this person, even if they end up in a wheelchair or they lose their mind or worse. In my experience, marriages have the tendency to end up crashing down in flames – both spouses hating and resenting each other. It seems they almost never end with "happily ever after" like the movies, fairy-tales, and butterflies promise you they will.

Regardless of devastating statistics, there is still something in my soul that wants to get married. Something deep within my heart that says I was made for it - as a means to glorifying God, of course. I have never felt the call to be single for the rest of my life probably because God knows I'm not that brave. And since sinners are the only available spouse options, I am assured that holiness - not ease or comfort - will be the end goal of that endeavor.

More selfishly, marriage seems like a great way to obtain a built-in adventure buddy for the rest of my life. Plus, you know, double the income to fund the trips.

Being an idealistic girl, I grew up imagining the man that I would spend my life with. I talked about him from time to time, theoretically, at sleepovers. "What kind of guy do you see me ending up with?" I would ask Megan. Her answers were always the best. She told me I should be with someone who could keep up with me, someone funny and loud and probably obnoxious to her. I told her she would end up with someone who was intellectual, chill, liked to hunt. I absolutely nailed it, by the way.

Youth camp counselors encouraged me to make a list of characteristics and traits that I would want in a husband. I always thought that seemed ridiculous and somehow beneath me, so I didn’t do it. How was I supposed to know what I wanted anyways? At the time, I was having a lot of trouble deciding which trinket to buy at souvenir shops. Not to mention, at the time, the primary character quality for the man of my dreams was that he played sports and didn’t wear braces. Living in Texas, this didn’t narrow the options whatsoever.

Despite refusing to make a list, I pictured him being tall, dark and handsome like every girl does. I prayed that he would be an athlete with defined calf muscles because that’s big for me. I always wanted him to have good teeth and decent personal hygiene. I hoped that he would have a sense of humor and that we would have more fun together than we ever had apart. I fantasized all the adventures I would want to go on with him, and how safe I would feel wrapped in his arms. The only thing I thought mandatory was that he distinctly smelled good.

What no one told me though, is that finding this person isn’t the finish line - it’s the starting blocks. I never even considered the vulnerable road I would have to walk with him before ever considering marriage. Vulnerability has never really been my thing, so this came as quite a shock to me.

Come to find out, I am deeply afraid of being fully known. I have insecurity issues masked in bold confidence and a carefree spirit. I hate the feeling of not being understood, and I never want to be bored because boredom usually precedes a feeling of being trapped in it. Feeling trapped gives me anxiety. So I run from that at all cost. Try not to think about it. Distraction helps. I bury fear with attempts at control. I laugh about things that aren’t THAT funny, trying to force myself out of my own head. I think that if I can laugh hard enough I can persuade myself to believe that I'm not scared. Deep down I know better.

This has been my tactic for years.

Seasons of my life have exhausted a sequence of running from fear and vulnerability and seeking something usually just out of reach. I frantically searched for something to quiet my anxiety and give me freedom but also, paradoxically, security. The fear always just ran right along with me. Changing my circumstances didn't give me reprieve, just a new setting.

In college when I started to feel trapped, my throat would feel like it was closing. Heavy weight would press on my chest like I was being crushed and heat would swell in my head. Mind racing and fingers tingling, I had the uncontrollable urge to run, cry, or enter into some kind of adrenaline rush to make it stop. My body tensed. Fists clenched. A counselor told me that this was defined as a “panic attack.” I told her that she was being really dramatic. This coming from the girl having panic attacks. 

The idea of marriage sort of evoked the same anxiety in me - less severe but still very panicked. I thought that if I said yes to the rest of my life with somebody, I would never get to be myself ever again. That my free spirit would die, my independence and personality stripped, and I would all of the sudden become a stereotypical housewife with a completely different identity and agenda. Probably bored all the time, I would be forced into a monotonous life of washing dishes and laundry. The only visible perk being that I could have children, biblically, to distract me from how horribly lonely I felt despite lying next to someone every night.

It went against every fiber in my adventurous soul.

My answer to this fear was to keep all men at a safe distance and always have an exit strategy. I went on dates but they never turned into relationships. I laughed off the idea of something serious. I didn’t know what I wanted from anyone besides attention, anyways. I developed a bad habit of drawing people in with no real intention of keeping them close. Plagued by the fear of abandonment, I barricaded my heart because maybe if I didn’t care, it wouldn’t hurt.

Not to mention, I knew all too well that deriving one's identity from another person is a short road to resentment. I had walked that road one too many times and learned my lesson the hard way. So I reveled in singleness, pushing my fear out of sight and out of mind. It was easy for the most part especially because I lived in beautiful Colorado.

Instead of falling in love with a boy, I fell in love with Scripture and with the Rocky Mountains. I fell in love with the crisp mountain air on morning walks around Wash Park. I fell in love with all the friends who helped me figure out what it meant to be authentic in my imperfection. I fell in love with laughing and with road trips. I fell in love with the aspen trees especially in autumn when their little leaves are bursting with color. I fell deeper in love with the God that created it all for me.

God in all His sovereignty guided me through this season. He needed to work out something in me that was buried deep from everything that had led me to that place. Locked down for years. Things I had grown completely numb to. He needed to redefine all the things I believed about love and marriage and so he completely removed me from the suffocating search of finding the perfect person to marry. Instead, He let me breathe easy and let me practice falling in love with other things. 

Eventually, God asked me to make the bold decision to stop running from fear, to plant my feet and turn around to face it and find Him forever faithful, as promised. First, He moved me to Dallas. That was the scariest and hardest thing I have ever done. When I got here, He quickly placed me into a relationship where I would learn how to fall in love with a person the way He designed it to happen. God’s way, for God’s will, for God’s glory. I have been squirming through the process of being honest with myself and with this boy for almost a year now.

Ten months ago, I started dating him. He changed everything. Over these months, I have had the most incredibly defenseless conversations of my entire life. Remind me to tell you about the time I told him I was scared he would abandon me on “Love Island” which of course is an imaginary place filled with the shame of unrequited love. With him, I want to be seen as strong and pulled together but I have been found more imperfect and fragile than ever before. I have no way of lying to him about how tough I am because he has seen me cry for no valid reason. One time I cried because I didn’t know what to wear. Another time I cried because he wanted to take me shoe shopping. It’s madness. I can’t hide all of the things I hate about myself in dating him. Not if I truly want it to work.

I could define dating as the biggest vulnerability hangover of my life, but at the same time it feels a lot like falling in love with my best friend. It forces me to release my grip and rest in Jesus, even when I have no certainty and no control of tomorrow’s outcome. I definitely have no control over his decisions. The realization that I am giving another human being the perfect opportunity to wound me in all the deepest ways is thick, but fear does not outweigh all the joys of teaming up with someone I believe in and trust.

God is teaching me that vulnerability is not synonymous with weakness, but is actually the birthplace of everything good. Slowly, He is starting to release me from the panicked tension that screams at me to protect myself at all cost. He replaces my running shoes with a new tactic of pressing into discomfort to tell the messy truth, knowing and believing that I am capable of being loved anyways. 

In the midst of all the excruciating vulnerability, I find the freedom and reprieve that I never found running. If I can just weather the storm of being known, the thick cloud of fear will finally catch a ray of the sunlight of belonging and confidence. Then another. Then another.

He is special. Different. He challenges everything I thought I knew. He is funny and makes me belly laugh until I am crying and pleading with him to shut the hell up. He wants to travel the world with me, and I have told him many times that I would leave tonight. He has dark brown hair that I prefer to be messy. He prefers it to look manicured and swept over to one side. I mess it up all the time because he looks good with messy hair. I have studied his face, his hands, and his feet trying to memorize all of the details. He is just tall enough that I have to stand on my tippy-toes to kiss him, and he really likes shoes, watches, and shorts that are entirely too short. He talks with funny voices, makes funny faces, and when he wears his baseball cap I nearly die of giddiness because I think he is the best looking boy in the whole wide world.

We are both such messy works in progress - so madly adored by Jesus that we can hardly stand up under the weight of his love, mercy, and grace. Next to him I feel fearless, even though he knows very well that I am not. With him, marriage doesn’t seem so scary.

As long as my eyes never shift their focus from God in all His glory, I am free to walk boldly into this relationship wherever it leads. I am free to be fully myself, regardless of his response to me. My hesitations are all non-existent in light of the majesty of our God; my crippling fear silenced in His presence. Jesus tells me that YES, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes very afraid, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am also brave and beautiful and worthy of love and belonging. He didn’t need to give me a human to prove that to me but in all of his abundant grace, He has. And the love of Jesus echoes all over the walls of our relationship.

And if I am going to do this whole vulnerability thing with anyone – I so very much want it to be with him.