vulnerability

Sometimes God seems to be killing us when He is actually saving us.

I am vulnerability under scarred skin. Numbness crawling behind wine soaked lips. A cocoon of grief battling a chest full of hushed breaths, longing to escape the mod-podge of memories, that journal where I've been. Layer after layer they are sealed upon my person, encapsulating time in a vessel that has sailed one too many shores.

Once trust is built, distance cannot kill it. Time and space alone cannot destroy authentic connection.

The way to transmute the pain of life is to reveal the wounded side of things, evil, even, and then place the wound inside of sacred space. The Bible is about naming, facing, and then forgiving the wounds of history.

Your child__ sense of security is not grounded in how perfect you are, but in the quality of the relationship you have.

To be affirming and encouraging of others requires vulnerability on your part.

If there was any great lesson in life it was this: No battle was ever won with silence.

The tendency to trust easily anyone gives way to a certain vulnerability.

Trust is tough since it involves that quixotic mix of integrity, vulnerability, and intimacy. But trust anyway.

I am a great believer in not pushing each other__ __uttons_ just because we know where they are! That__ part of trusting each other. We need to trust that our vulnerabilities and challenges are safe with the person we love.

We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.

If we are going to find our way out of shame and back to each other, vulnerability is the path and courage is the light. To set down those lists of *what we're supposed to be* is brave. To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.

Vulnerability really means to be strong and secure enough within yourself that you are able to walk outside without your armor on. You are able to show up in life as just you. That is genuine strength and courage. Armor may look tough, but all it does is mask insecurity and fear.

We are in this together. None of us truly walk in isolation, even when we cannot sense the presence of another for miles upon miles. Even in the worst of our desolation. Even during our coldest 3am breakdown. Even when we shut out the world and spin in circles until we collapse. Even then the light still gets in. Even then the heart still opens and reaches, tendrils of hope curling and bending toward slivers of light. Upward, outward, in all directions _ seeking light at all cost. One way or another, we all grow toward the light.

Vulnerability lets in light.

You are beautiful and magical and perfect, especially because of your flaws. Those cracks are what let the light in, baby.

I hope that you will be faced with difficult choices and decisions, trials that won__ undo you, but that will drive you toward reflection and understanding. Trust that your fears will sometimes tell you about your desires. You will see that you can survive the terror that comes with growth and change, with vulnerability and risk.

In the building of walls to protect ourselves_ we have managed to keep ourselves from the best in this life. And so the line is drawn whether to live and to be broken and unbroken or to breathe but not live at all. Perhaps there is no such thing as brokenness, afterall. Perhaps it is all just called "living.