Yesterday we met with a financial planner. Not because we have unlimited wealth and resources, but to help us prioritize and achieve some personal goals for our family. Now just making it to the office was huge for me. I have major panic attacks related to money discussions, but there I was sitting in an office discussing our budget with a financial planner. I did great in the office and then on the way home in the car by myself I dissolved into tears. I became incredibly angry with my husband over some innocent comments and I was so frustrated with myself because of my reactions. It is only today that I finally realized why I had the reaction I did....
I had made the choice to be vulnerable.
You see...
I set up the appointment. We had tried doing this a few times before, but my panic attacks had ended up in us finally taking it off the calendar. I was the one to re-initiate this meeting. I told my husband I could handle it and then when the tears showed up afterwards I was angry at myself for a perceived weakness.
I don't know about you, but letting someone look at my mess is something I avoid at all cost!
I want to look like the ideal little family of four. All put together and perfect. I mean we all know it is not true for any one of us, but we still want that to be how others see us, right?
And so comes our financial planner into the mess that is our budget. We might not be swimming in debt, but our budget is the thing that we have wrangled with since we got married. It feels sort of like trying to wrestle a greased pig.... Sometimes we have it and then it slips and gets away again. So we decided to enlist the help of a coach.
Enter vulnerability....
To invite someone in to look at how you spend you money, where you have debt and what you haven't even thought about preparing for is hard. You open yourself up to fear of judgment.
Theirs and your own.
Recognizing the way this makes you vulnerable has made me look at my life to realize that this meeting yesterday, even with my meltdown which lasted less than an hour, was one step in a series of choices to be vulnerable.
The thing about choosing to be vulnerable is that you open yourself up.
Sometimes it is to rejection.
Other times is it to new or deeper relationships.
My life lately has been a series of choices to be vulnerable.
To let people into my story in a different way.
There were some who ended the conversation.
They walked away uninterested in understanding me better
or going deeper in our relationship.
There were others though, who met me in my vulnerability.
They tackled the hard issues that I was wrestling with or just sat and listened and then shared part of their story.
Vulnerability drew us closer.
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another:
'What! You too?
I thought I was the only one.'
~C.S. Lewis
Vulnerability is something that as humans we fear.
We fear the rejection that will come from some when we open up, but when we live in that fear we miss what happens when someone says,
"What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
Vulnerability provides the opportunity for us to see who genuinely wants to share our journey and who merely is there because it is convenient.
Vulnerability allows us to recognize when boundaries are necessary.
Vulnerability moves us closer to the heart of God.
One of the things I think we can miss in the story of Christ is that at the moment of his death he was stripped bare. He was exposed to anyone and everyone.
When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots.
~Matthew 27:35
There were people who chose to mock. There were people who chose to desert him. There were also those who chose to draw closer. Vulnerability is tied irrevocably to the story of Christ. Letting someone into our messy life is the only way we truly heal.
If we let them the fears that keep us from practicing vulnerability will destroy us. They will isolate us and restrict us to "safe" relationships that never challenge us. If we push past our fears and begin to practice vulnerability though, we find those with shared experiences. Some will join us where we are on our journey and others will show us how to make it through the parts that we are unsure of the path.
Vulnerability builds community.
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