I read the other day: "The world has enough women who live a masked insecurity. It needs more women who live a brave vulnerability." Makes me wanna nod my head and shout hallelujah like I'm in a southern Baptist church pew. I want that. But vulnerability is hard. It requires something. There is risk and no guarantee. But the potential... oh, the potential. That we might actually know and see each other, and in so doing, understand ourselves so much more. The irony of vulnerability is its strength. Its power. Its ability to connect what was once isolated. Its refusal of apathy. It's intentional drive toward growth, toward change.
Brave vulnerability. It reminds me of one of my favorite Ernest Hemingway quotes: There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. So here goes. The last two months have been the hardest of my life. My son's body is wracked by a disease that requires an antidote of poison, a deep betrayal was laid to bare, finances were crushed, a long sought dream threatened. And yet ... the last two month have quite possibly been the best months in a long long time. We have come together as a family wrapping ourselves around each other tenderly, intentionally, with a grace and a love that defies the expectations of the day. Financial support has come flooding in; one inexplicable God-thing after another. And our dream of a home in NoMi moves forward. Not in our timing—none of it, actually, in our timing— but here, in this sweet spot of mercy amidst sorrow, is a joy and beauty that is hard to fathom.
If I've taken anything out of this hard season of life, it is that we are not alone. I have felt the Holy Spirit like few times in my life and have felt a connection with so many people the world over—people I may not even know by name. We were never meant to do life alone—we were meant to live in community with each other, bearing each other's burdens. Because that's how we can survive the bad stuff... no, scratch that, that's how we can thrive even in the bad stuff. That's how we can grow and that's where we can find purpose. Love is impossible without vulnerability. I think truly living is impossible without it too. Vulnerability ties us to each other. It's not easy and its not cheap. It requires incremental efforts anchored in intentionality. And in the surrender and the effort that is vulnerability, lies the assurance of what we so desperately long for: connection.