Have Cheap Luggage, Will Travel

My Heart’s Desires at Arms Length

Life is molded by different things for different people. Mine is molded by my interactions with others. People make up my motivation for everything from work to my spare time. Which makes a conversation I recently had all that more confusing.

“I know the superficial stuff about you but I don’t really know you. Will you just let me get to know you?” This was said to me by a guy I’ve known for 14 years. That affected me on several of different levels.

- It’s been a while since the last time anybody asked that of me.
- I can never think of a time that a significant other asked that of me.
- How could my love for people get lost enough for a friend of 14 years not to know me?

Celebrate Recovery has helped me immensely but the best influence it has had is my new found ability to see my own contribution to a situation. In almost every situation that frustrates you, except abuse, you have contributed in some way to the undesirable outcome.

I can hear you screaming now – Not true! So and so is an absolute jerk and I did nothing! Is it possible you are so offended or hurt that you can’t rationally asses that? I digress…

Anyway, it would be easy to say woe is me, nobody understands me or loves me like they should, but CR won’t let me get away with that anymore.

So, how can a person I have been friends with for 14 years know me but not know me. If I was honest about it, I would say that I don’t let people get close enough to help me. Asking for help means that you are dependent on another person and on top of that you have to be vulnerable enough to admit that you don’t know it all. I’m not good at that, so I get close enough to people to help them but not let them help me.

It even comes out in small things. Right now one of my tires needs air and I have this weird fear of putting air in my tires. A visual of me putting too much air in the tire and getting blown to smithereens pops into my head every time and I chicken out. Easy to fix right? Just ask for help. It’s been low for a month now.

"Hello, my name is Nichole and I live on a self imposed island of isolation."

The worst part of all that is that my island is not biblical. All through the New Testament it talks about the first church and the benefits of living in true community.

One of my heart’s desires is to have a good group of friends that I can live life with (mostly dudes as I am up to eyeballs in godly women at work) and have been really frustrated at my ability to find them. Here comes my contribution.

I think I have held my desire away from me at arm’s length because of my inability to be vulnerable. The problem is not that I can’t ask somebody to air up my tire, but the problem is the attitude that would keep me from asking for help with my tire. Nobody is looking for one sided friendships. I am afraid it is infected more of my life than I thought. In case you would disagree with me, talk to my friend of 14 years.

How funny that the path to my heart’s desire starts with a tire. The first step is admitting you have a problem right? So….can somebody help me air up my tire?

Read: Luke 15:11-23
Ask/Journal: Can you think of a time where swallowing your pride lead to a surprising outcome? Can you think of a situation that you are currently that you need to swallow your pride about?

Read: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
Ask/ Journal: In reading this passage, can you see how God designed our world and relationships to be interdependent? Is there a person in your life that does something for you that you can not? Are you that person for somebody else?

Read: Romans 12:4-8
Ask/Journal: Do you think striving to do it all yourself helps or hurts God’s plan to help other discover their passions?

"The capacity to express vulnerability is a great human strength. We sometimes wish our vulnerabilities would disappear so we wouldn’t have to worry about hiding them. Without these pesky vulnerabilities, we could convince the world that we have it all together, that we have no unsatisfied needs that we can care constantly for others and never need care ourselves.

It is hard to let people see our vulnerable parts — our fears and insecurities, our sadness and shame. To express vulnerability requires courage. Only in exercising this courage, in bravely showing our 'weakness' to another, do we achieve a form of real power — the power to ask for help when needed." - Sarah Parsons, A Clearing Season