Becoming Vulnerable

One of the things about the English language that often baffles me is how one word can have completely opposite meanings depending on the context in which it is used. Today in my meeting with friends, the word vulnerable was shared and used to describe how one of the women was feeling. As she began to share, most of us around the table agreed that we have had moments lately of feeling the same way.

As I continued thinking about this word, I began considering all of the implications it can have. According to dictionary.com, it can mean the following:

–adjective
1.capable of or susceptible to being wounded or hurt, as by a weapon: a vulnerable part of the body.
2. open to moral attack, criticism, temptation, etc.: an argument vulnerable to refutation; He is vulnerable to bribery.
3. (of a place) open to assault; difficult to defend: a vulnerable bridge.


Usually when we are vulnerable, it is because of an area in our lives we have left unprotected. If our full armor is not in place, we leave parts of us exposed to attacks. We are vulnerable when we put ourselves into a situation to sin. We leave our spouses vulnerable when we have disconnected from the relationship. We leave our children vulnerable when we are not attentive parents.

On a different note, when I read the definition as being susceptible to being wounded, I consider being vulnerable in the context of our relationships. By me writing on this blog and exposing my thoughts and feelings, I'm leaving myself vulnerable. Something as simple as a Facebook status leaves you vulnerable to comments from people who may disagree with you. What they have to say may attack your beliefs and possibly hurt your feelings. In sharing their opinions, they open themselves to be vulnerable to anyone else who may subsequently follow in their comments.

On the flip side of this vulnerability is that in order to establish any type of deep relationship, we MUST be willing to leave ourselves vulnerable. Without vulnerability, all you have is fake, surface level relationships. What is the point of that? I think we have all been hurt at some point in our lives by someone we trusted to never hurt us. However, as all of us being human (despite what some think about their superhuman powers), we can and will inevitably hurt those we love. Not that we do it intentionally, but we all make mistakes because none of us are perfect. This also means when we allow ourselves to become vulnerable in love to others, they will inevitably hurt us in some way. They will cause wounds. More often than not, it's not their action or words that wound. It's simply their actions or words that reopen a scab on a wound that existed prior to the current offense.

If you will allow me to become vulnerable here I can admit the greatest wound in my life has been the one of abandonment. Those who should have protected me in life never did. Those who should have stuck by me and supported me, did not. Those who knew of painful issues from my past and promised to not do the same thing to me, eventually did those exact same things. All I remember saying to them was "But you PROMISED you wouldn't do that!" For most of my life I kept people, both male and female, at an arms length away from me. My reasoning was that if I did not allow you to get close to me, then you could not hurt me. This refusal to become vulnerable left me at a place where I had become the one thing I feared the most....alone. Not only was I a single mother of two who never went on any dates, but I had no genuine female friendships either.

As God began speaking to me regarding this area of my life, He showed me why I needed to start tearing down my wall. He spoke to me by saying my wall was doing a great job at keeping the bad out, however it was keeping all the good out as well. Not only was the good on the other side of my wall unable to penetrate the fortress I had built, but the good I had inside my castle was being kept inside of me! He asked me what good was all I had experienced and learned in the process of my pain if I never shared my story, feelings, and lessons with others.

God instructed me to issue an open invitation to my home for any women who wanted to get together for coffee and conversation. I am definitely not what you would call the "hostess" type of personality. This step was a bold one for me. I did not know who would respond to this invitation or even what we would talk about. What if someone showed up and we had nothing in common? What if they got to know the REAL me and decided I was not really someone they wanted to spend time around? What if I became VULNERABLE to them and they ABANDONED me?

In the 7 months since I opened my home, I have become close friends with a dozen or so women who mean the world to me. Most of them I knew only in passing by seeing them at church on Sundays. Some of them I had not had more than two conversations with until they showed up at my house. What I found in our little community is that all of them were in a similar place as myself. They all longed to have real, genuine friendships with other women. As much hurt as we had all experienced, we all longed to be vulnerable again. To tell you there were some DEEP wounds in this group is an extreme understatement. However, what we all found through our vulnerability is that it is possible to allow ourselves to be open to hurt, yet find love and acceptance instead. Just as the caterpillar becomes vulnerable within it's cocoon and knows it could be facing it's end, we too can find ourselves breaking free, sprouting wings and flying because of our vulnerability.