At some point in time, I realized that my relationships were not moving and growing like they should have been. Upon reflecting over and over, I saw myself standing there like a rock.
A huge part of my unwillingness to open up or move closer to someone was due to what I noticed about them: disloyal, selfish, and just simply not for me.
However, another huge, and possibly major part, was that I had no place to be myself. No place where I felt safe. Looking back now, I see all the walls I had to build around myself, and the walls that formed even though I didn’t try. The ones there that say “I won’t tell you anything” because I had no one who listened. While at the same time wanting to share things, but being unable to. It wasn’t a habit. It couldn’t be.
There were times in my relationships with people that I opened up just a little. Testing the waters for safety, and each time my toes retracted because the waters were hot. I didn’t want to get in. Because if I get in, the things that I share in confidence, would not be kept in that same safety. Many times over, a whisper of mine echoed. They were no place for me to be.
Eventually, my walls grew taller and tougher. And because I didn’t know to count those people for who they were, unsafe and untrustworthy, I began to see everyone that way. I couldn’t trust anyone. No one was safe. I watched the way my mind built those walls and I chose to lay bricks in the same pattern. To keep everyone at bay. To stay safe.
The older I got, the more I realized myself. The more I saw how people trusted me in a way I didn’t trust them. Their dependence on my insight and support, but I couldn’t get the same in return. I am not dwelling on what they couldn’t do for me, but who I was for them. And I thought, if I am this way, then there must be people capable of being the same way. I wanted them. But the walls I had built would not allow me to find them, or them to find me.
And so, bit by bit, I chiseled away at the wall I had built, the one that stood for years, in hopes of finding safety. In hopes of finding them.
Each time I chiseled away, barely scratching the surface in many areas, creating soft spots for those with the might, and most loving intentions, to make their way to me..I was reminded time and time again that I was looking for myself.
I am looking for someone who when I show them my flaws, they will not turn me away. And where I once strolled in this park of development, due to procrastination and fear of being rejected, I leaped.
Still, while scratching the surface of my walls, I became okay with doing it. Even better, more willing to chip in areas that I avoided.
Because the principle that sought me, through understanding, was a gift from God.
I am looking for someone who when I show them my flaws, they will not turn me away.
Or..
If I let this wall crumble before me, exposing my most fragile self, I will reveal to be a most delicate treasure. And in the same way that some things will be regarded as trash and thrown away, while others are regarded as treasures to be kept close and preserved; some will move past me because I am who I am. And some will move closer and value me for who I am.
A treasure they are themselves, to see me and choose me for who I am, that I value them and hope for them, that even with the possibility of rejection from all, for even just one to truly value me, I find it worth it to stand exposed in the truth of who I am.
To be vulnerable, and in hopes of doing so, I will have the joy of being rejected by those who have nothing for me.
Oh, complete am I, to be a treasure to the One who chose to create me as such. And in His love, continued to choose me through the building and tumbling of walls, that He knows all of me, even that which I do not know. Leading me to the exposure, that will cause those who follow in His love, to see me and love me the same as He. With a piercing love. Love.
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
John 13:34
I want to love, and be the other.