The question instigated an inner dialogue with my younger self and I wondered if there was a pattern that I could trace; something that could give me a lead to the million dollar question in my teenage life, a question I remember having been repeatedly asked from the ages of nine to nineteen; why are most of your friends girls?

Though I am uncertain of how many of you will resonate with my words in this post, I am convicted to open up my heart, representing those sailing/ who have sailed similar waters to me, and to start a discussion with those interested.

Please note that the sole purpose of this post is to firstly, aid all of us, as the Body of Christ, to understand one another better by sharing a singular perspective on friendship that you may not have experienced “so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other” 1 Corinthians 12:25, and secondly to encourage us to dig deep, confronting our long-forsaken past insecurities that may be hindering us from moving forward in our present, “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed…” Jeremiah 17:14.

Let me start by asking you;

Are most of your friends the same sex as you or the opposite sex?

Mine, for the majority of my life, have predominantly been of the opposite sex. I think it’ll be helpful to give you a background into why I think that has been the case; hopefully some of you will share similar experiences and relate to my story.

Throughout primary school I was mostly friends with other boys out of circumstance, not choice; I have no sisters and wasn’t surrounded by any young female relatives. I attended an all boys primary school and living in Cairo at the time, had very little exposure to girls at church. I do have distinct memories however, of eight year old me purposely avoiding to cross paths with specific boys due to a lack of relatibility. I vividly remember a sleepover with a church friend that left me feeling very ‘different’ to say the least; it was our tradition to play the Lion King PC game, but that evening my friend deemed it a “girls’ game” and we played, what was to me, a boring generic car-racing game instead. Little did I know that this was a glimpse into what I was going to encounter for the next ten or so years of my life.

Migrating to the UK aged 9 highlighted my disinterest in the majority of toys/ activities targeting my age/ sex demographic from the get-go; I could not care less about sports or cars and I certainly preferred drawing in my sketchbook or playing Pokemon Sapphire on my GameBoy Advance SP, than GTA with my brother on ‘our’ PS2. Befriending other males throughout secondary school became an intricate process of elimination; I deeply cherished the few that made me feel understood.

Though my social skills flourished in my teens, I began to embrace my introversion more and more – needing an intimate environment to feel safe. Naturally preferring and seeking long lasting one-on-one friendships, the false ‘revelation’ that I would not receive the intimacy I desired out of a friendship with another guy, was one I quickly believed. Without overly generalizing, I believe that young men struggle with emotional expression due to the hyper-masculine social construct they are born into from the get-go. Large male-dominated friendship groups are preferred over singular brotherhoods at that age as they provide a safety net from raw emotional expression, by masking a boy’s brokenness with quality banter and social hierarchy. In my case, the few male friendships I did harbor, disintegrated as quickly as they were formed.

Insecurity in Masculinity:

Having little in common with the males around me while growing up began to plant a seed of thought that I am not “man enough” for, what I perceived were, masculine tasks/ interests. The words “you’re just different from the other boys” that I had heard oh so often, began to seep into my skin and I had begun to base my entire identity on who I was not, rather than who I was.

Befriending females thus became very simple; since I was not like the other guys, and neither were they (being females themselves), we met on common grounds. I grew tired of the constant feeling of being “less manly” than the company surrounding me. I grew tired of proving my masculinity by faking my interest in subjects and banter that did not stimulate me. I grew tired of it all.

“The more one experiences pressures to “show oneself” and demonstrate masculine competency, the greater the hypervulnerability. The reason is that “showing off” one’s manhood is an emotionally immature process. This manhood is insecure and is based on what one does rather than who one is. Insecure masculinity comprises a set of behaviours driven by fear to prove to the world that one’s manhood isn’t weak, yet these same behaviours can inadvertently increase the feelings of fear they are intended to eradicate.”

– Niobe Way, Adolescent Boys – Exploring Diverse Cultures of Boyhood 

In an oestragen concentrated environment, testosterone is very easy to spot.

And that felt good.

It fed my ego when I was asked questions to understand the perspective of a guy by my female friends. I no longer sought masculine validation from other guys as it was affirmed by the multitude of girls around me. This insecurity in my masculinity grew deeper, cocooning me in a dangerous comfort zone around females, that neither challenged me as a man nor helped me to feel represented.

Though healing low self-esteem/ self-confidence, particularly targeting fragile masculinity as in my case, is a life-long journey, The Lord eases it by His grace.

“…the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” Luke 1:78(b)-79

Though His luminosity exposes our innermost insecurities, instead of condemning us as the world does, The Lord uses His light to illuminate the road of healing for us to walk through, in order to achieve perfect peace with who we are. By exposing our insecurities to our Creator, we learn to humble ourselves in His presence and confess that though we do not posses the power to rid ourselves of our demons, He, the Alpha and Omega, surely does.

“The sick one who is acquainted with his sickness is easily to be cured; and he who confesses that he is in pain is near to health. Many are the pains of the hard heart; and when the sick one resists the physician, his torments will be augmented.”

– St. Isaac the Syrian

Truth rooted in The Word affirms who I am in Christ, rather than who I am not in the world. I begin to comprehend the intensity of The Father’s love for me; how He created my inmost being and knit me together in my mother’s womb (Ps 139:13). Trivial validations for masculinity or femininity from others in our worlds pale in comparison to a God-rooted self-confidence in our identities in Christ.

Embracing my identity in Christ and consequently my masculinity, however it manifests itself in my world, liberates me from trying to box what manhood means according to other people, in their worlds.

Embracing The Spectrum:

The healing process is radical. It not only frees you of your chains, but opens your eyes to your fellow man’s needs so that you are moved to minister to those you once deemed unworthy.

I spent my adolescent years wrongfully believing that the boys who had made me feel isolated growing up, were unworthy; of my friendship, my time, or even my concern. “They had had it easy”. They fit “the norm”, so any struggle they encountered I deemed insignificant compared to mine.

Once healing began, The Holy Spirit gave me a crash course on statistics to open my eyes as to how the Body of Christ functions. If you’re not familiar with the term ‘normal distribution’, it is a function that represents the distribution of many random variables. It’s normally represented in a ‘bell curve’, as shown in the diagram below;

I won’t bore you with the stats talk, trust me – I hated maths at school, but this perfectly illustrates the point that I want to make. (If you’re a maths genius, please bare with me as I butcher this concept). In this diagram, you can see that most variables fall in the centre at 34.1%, and as you move to either sides of the curve, the percentage decreases. The data is representing the distribution of the same variables; the majority is at the centre, but there are still plenty that don’t fall in the dark blue region.

Once I realised that though I may not fall in the “34.1%”, with the majority of men, in Christ I am still represented in the bell curve of masculinity, such a heavy weight was lifted. I belonged. I’m here. I’m here. I remember that season of discovery vividly – how the Holy Spirit used it to re-instill so much lost confidence in my soul,  even convicting and burdening me for my fellow brothers, whether in the 34.1% or in the 0.1% bracket, now that I had realised that we are one Body. “For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts…” Romans 12:4-6(a).We the Church, embrace the undeniable spectrum of personalities existing within humanity as it is created in God’s image and likeness, for “Christ is all, and is in all.” Colossians 3:11(b). In the Lord, the gentle man and the resilient woman, the expressive male and the reserved female, the stay-at-home father and the working mother alike, hold a significant role in the Body of Christ. A role that only the 0.1% on the bell curve can fulfill; a calling though not understood by the world, is fully known and anointed by The Father.

Every member of the Body becomes a spirit reflecting a trait of his/ her Creator in your eyes, when you choose to embrace the normal distribution that exists within your own sex and the opposite sex. This liberating truth opened the door to the brotherhood I had longed for all along; pure, unfiltered, edifying, long-lasting friendships with other men. Brotherhood that challenges me when I am falling short, comforts me when I am miserable, corrects me when I am backsliding, and prays for me when I am broken. By the grace of God, I now have brothers whose souls are knit to mine, and though we may fall at different points on the spectrum, “a friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity” Proverbs 17:17. 

“I want you to know that the love that is between me and you is no bodily love, but a spiritual love. For bodily friendship has no firmness or stability, being moved by strange winds.”

– St. Anthony

‘David & Jonathan’ by Joanne Rozeik

If you have walked a similar road to me, I pray for your healing. I pray that your rooted identity in the Lord would nourish your self-confidence; that the chains of self-doubt and low self esteem would break free today. I pray that you would accept the radical truth that you are called to serve and minister to those very same people that make you feel unqualified. “The man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return home and tell how much God has done for you.” So the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him.” Luke 8:38-39.

If you fall in the 34.1%, I pray for your healing also. For we are one Body, and if one brother or sister is hurting, then you are hurting also. I pray that the Lord would use you to embrace His children at all ends of the beautiful spectrum that humanity has been created into. I pray that you are a voice for those that have yet to discover theirs.

“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21

Mother Theresa

~

“Imagine you’re walking through a forest.

Full of tall strong beautiful trees

Resilient against the wind and the rain

Beneath the soil

They are tied together

Intertwined

Beneath the soil

There are millions of roots

Connected

And they are better together

And when I think of these trees

I think of us

And how we try to go through life by ourselves

The times we’ve felt broken

The times we felt left

The times we’ve been hurt by someone else

We proclaim this loud and bold

But unlike the trees

We decide

To go it alone

I marvel at the pain

We can too easily shut out

I marvel at the years

We choose to lose sight

Everyday we see people’s wounds

But we never see past them

We never see through

We pick up our pace

We pick up our stones

We cross the other side of the road

We say there is no more room at our table

We love at a distance

We are only fair weather friends to weather the storms of this life

Because loving people’s imperfections is inconvenient and messy

Yet there’s no line of Scripture where Jesus commands us to seek our ease

No line where He commands that we seek our self

We look at people’s broken behaviours

ignore,

belittle

condemn

judge,

Look for quick cures but we do not see

Every broken behaviour comes from an unmet need

Behind every broken is someone who looks like our saviour

We go it alone

But alone is not what we were created for

Alone is not what the church was created to be

Isn’t it the one who cares for the poor and needy

The little and the least

Whom Christ will say come sit at my table

Come sit with me

When I hear this my immediate thought is

Where can I find a hungry

thirsty

naked

foreign

sick

imprisoned

stranger

Whom I can relieve

But In my attempts to love the needy

I discover my own poverty.

In clothing the naked,

I discover am naked of all virtue

In visiting the prisoner

I realise I am imprisoned by prideful thoughts

In visiting the sick

I learn I am sick with selfish desires.

I am who Jesus is referring to

I am the Least of These

It is not that poor guy on the street corner

Or the lonely girl in the corner,

who are the least of these.

No, it is me.

I am the least of Christ’s brethren.

I may not be poor naked sick or imprisoned in body

But I am poor naked sick and imprisoned in soul

I am starved of loving kindness

parched by lack of forgiveness

Sick with the disease of lust

Naked of compassion

Imprisoned by habits of self-indulgence.

And if I am the least,

If I really know that I am the least

Then the least that I can do

Is not go it alone

The least I can do is share my bread

When I am the one who hungers for righteousness

The least I can do is share my cup

When I am the one thirsting for Life.

The least I can do is share my stuff

When my I am so poor of anything valuable

The least I can do is sit with the lonely

When I am too lonely of the Father’s house

I have no clothes to cover my own sinful nakedness,

I have no medicine to heal my own blindness

I have no key to liberate my imprisoned soul.

Yet

He calls us His temple

Because we are pieces that come together to build and hold up one another

He calls us His body

Because we are all different parts and no purpose or function is like the other

He calls us His vine

Because we are only living when we are connected to one another

In Him

Like the trees

We were made to stand tall here

We were made to be a part of this forest here

Standing firm against all odds

Creation representing creator God

But our own fears of being hurt

Casts a shadow on the reality

That the fissures I see in my neighbour

Are the same fractures that covers me.

Wrapped tight in this fear, we act out against love.

And when we act out against love

We act out against the One Who loves us. “

“God is love.”

1 in 3

3 in 1

A community

Just as love is meaningless without something to love.

So we are meaningless without our brother

When our brother is our life

Just as one God exists as three Persons in one,

So we were created to be wholly ourselves

When we are wholly one with the other

We don’t pray my father

But our father

We are His children

Our husband

We are his bride

Our shepherd

We are His sheep

He is the one who never leaves the one behind

No one is saved alone.

Everyone’s freedom is tangled

Everyone salvation tied up

Roots beneath the soil

So there can be no fences

There can be no hedges

No neat marked out lines

Of what is yours and what is mine

Because where my life ends

Yours can begin

When we need each other to survive

So let’s close the distance between you and me

Trade in our fear for curiosity

Tear down our fences to build bridges

Open our door for those who have no place of their own

Step into each other’s darkness with kindness as a burning lantern

Love others through their brokenness

Because our brokenness makes us more alike than unlike.

The powerless, the wounded and the weak

All those who cannot speak

Come sit beside me and tell me your story

Tell me of the million and one ways a soul can bruise

And I can tell the million and one ways a soul sees the Light.

The Light loves with abandon

His wounded hands love the wounded with no bounds.

Because we were created for one another

We belong to each other

No matter the weather

Like trees in a forest

Stronger

Taller

Together”

~

I retell the story once written of a woman caught in her weakness. A tale of piercing words and stones clenched in fists. Yet, there is a Man who bends low, speaks:

“He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” John 8:7

Stones fall like rain to the ground, every voice is silenced. My sweet sister falls too to the ground, and Mama says, “the Word has pierced her, she is humbling herself.”

“Neither do I accuse you, go and sin no more.” John 8:11

Sister wipes her tears in her shirt, cries,

“But I can’t change. I sleep with so many men. I’m 30 and I can’t have one man. My Father and mother don’t believe I can change, they call me a drunkard. So I just drink.”

We hold her close, speak softly: “we are your family, and we believe in you.”

“Really?” She stares at us, wide-eyed, in disbelief. “But how can I change, I drink. I don’t know how.”

“His power is your strength.

You are worthy.

You are loved.”

Wise Mama speaks to her of Paul on the road to Damascus, tells her the truth that no one is ever too far from grace, that there is no such thing as a lost cause.

“Nifuna, Nifuna, Nifuna” (I want, I want, I want), she pleads.

We hold hands in prayer, pleading for every chain and stronghold to break.

I marvel at the God who does not count our sin, only the number of hairs on our head. I marvel at the abundance of that love.

Sometimes those who are serving God become the hopeless, wishing that those whom they serve could change, but lacking the belief that they can actually change. Perhaps most people, if not all, have a list of “lost causes.” But maybe there is power in the faith of friends who believe in His power. Maybe hope for the hopeless starts right here, with us, when we pursue the wholeness of others by believing in the wholeness of others. Maybe our belief is everything; maybe our faith is more potent than we ever imagined. Like the paralytic man who’s healing came when his friends insisted to lay him before Christ.

When He saw their faith, He said to him, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” Luke 5:20

Because a roof was no hindrance when the “power of the Lord was present to heal them.” (Luke 5:17) Maybe breaking rooftops is our call, and maybe the hardest rooftop to break through is our own disbelief. What if hope for the hopeless looks like a man weeping and praying in faith before a holy God on behalf of an unfaithful nation (Ezra 9), until the power of God is displayed through their repentance (Ezra 10)?

What if those around us, who are in need of change, never changed because we never faithfully believed and prayed that they could?

What if we prayed for others, genuinely believing in Gods power?

Sweet sister comes the next evening for prayers, runs up to the altar weeping on her knees. Maybe our faith in Him on behalf of others is the most we really have to offer, maybe He is more powerful than we have ever known…

Sometimes we think that we are in need of a perfect home with everything neatly in place to show hospitality. And sometimes we think we need a perfect heart that has it all together to invite someone in and build that home. But there are homes we build with our friends not with hands but with conversations of openness and honesty, with the comfort to be as we are, who we are, where we are now. With all our sins and struggles and all our questions and doubts. Sharing death and grief, sex and desire, our needs, deepest inadequacies and regrets. We uncover the demolition in our hearts, unafraid of displaying the rubble, unafraid of leaving the keys to the doors we’ve always locked for someone else to walk in. In the face of each other’s rubble, there is no space for judgement, only the realisation that we all stand on the same levelled ground, a holy ground, where our pain and our struggles are communally felt, without measure, without degrees. Hospitality is the fearlessness to offer others a key into your warzone, and the fearlessness to choose to be present with another.

Many of us were raised strictly associating spiritual growth with the attendance of bible studies, worship evenings, quiet time and locking our bedroom doors in prayer. But there is spiritual growth at 2am at the back of a pickup truck, with seven hearts drawn in laughter and in love. There is growth in 6am swims through the river and in sharing water shoes when the rocks become too harsh beneath your feet. There is growth in conversations over eggs benedict and in sharing the words of people who have previously hurt and condemned us, and the relationships that have left us feeling less than who we were. There is growth in reconnecting with old friends and learning the hearts of new ones, because where there are people, there is God, and that is where we grow and self discover. There is growth in the daily victory of waking up and trying, trying, and trying again. There is growth in struggling through loss to believe that God is good, and there is also growth in firmly believing through the tragedy that God is good.

When we let God out of the man-made spiritual boxes we have created, we need not look far or deep or wide to see His face, but to the heart next to us to realise that He is here. For long we have found Him in foreign mission fields and in retreats, yet now we are awakened to find Him in His people, the church, the home that is built without hands.

After years of living under the weight of expectations and who we “should” be, many of us have locked so many doors of our hearts away for the fear of being known, for fear of being perceived as not spiritual, as not a man or woman of God. When we have tasted the condemnation of a community, that labels and silences us, our fears can only be rational and our walk becomes heavy. We were never called to pretend a false state of perfection. We were created in the image of Community for community. A community that is real, that moves from individualism to a place where we can reach out and ask why we’re created in a fallen world or why it’s so hard to hear God’s voice sometimes.

We all naturally gravitate to the community that will accept us for all we bring to the table, so we find ourselves projecting the finished product of ourselves that we believe our community desires so that we can find our home. All the while we live with the fear of truly being known and found out. We live in fear that one day someone will tear down the door to our demolition and see the truth; to see our addictions and the tears that keep us up at night. But Christ was always interested in the real authentic version of ourselves. Christ was never interested in the finished product more than he was in our journey to wholeness. And community was only ever meant to be a place without fear. A place where all we ask is to see with loving eyes, instead of with defense or judgment, the person before us. All of the wonder, grace and godliness lying in the demolition that is yet to be restored. We hope in the yet to come but we love and live the now of each other – no matter how much is taken apart. Hospitality is loving without the need to put it all back together. And hospitality never demands an invite. It waits, it loves, it is patient.

To our friends on that August summer night, we are eternally grateful for your stories.

“Maybe we’re all just shiny balls of light inside human machines.

Maybe we’re all trying desperately to convince others that the noise they hear coming out of our mouths is an accurate reflection of the intentions of the shiny ball of light inside the machine.

Maybe it screams,

“I am real in here, I am real in here, I am real here.”

Maybe the light inside me just wants to know, if you’re real too.”

-Iain Thomas

Co-written with Makrina

And that’s okay.

I hear you.
The weary heart that is tired of all the voices telling you to just “get over it already.”
The disheartened heart that wonders if she can ever love anyone as much as she loved him.
The broken heart that mourns the loss of years of friendship.
And you, who keeps telling yourself “not this” – that it’s been way too long for you to still feel this way.
I hear you.

I guess as humans we naturally progress, and we always want to move on. We want to come to a place of learning how to breath like we used to, without that other person. Arriving at the place where we no longer care, at least that’s what we’re made to think. We’re told that to move on is to stop loving, stop caring, and enjoy that all ties have been severed.

The truth is, you cannot drain an ocean and when you have loved deeply, you cannot one day wake up and unlove. Whether a relationship or a friendship, when another’s name has been etched into our heart, our world is changed because of them, especially when we have discovered parts of ourselves through them.

Human connection is one of the most fundamental cravings and perhaps that is why it is unerasable. Perhaps that is why, like tree roots in barren soil, we take the mould of those whose lives are mingled with ours. Perhaps that is why even after countless months of silence, speaking to them again is like finding a place you forgot existed; like travelling for so long and realising they are home, with the same scent and laugh as they had all that time ago. A place with the front porch light on and an open door, greeted by a smile that still remembers exactly what to say and how to say it. A coffee cup with your name on it, coffee poured just the way you’ve always liked it. Home. Connection. Belonging. And it’s like you never left. And maybe the truth is, you haven’t. Because they are a place where you will always feel known and seen for all that you are.

And that’s okay.

Maybe moving on looks more like making space for the complexity of those “it shouldn’t be like this” torrents of missing them and learning that we don’t need to act on what we feel no matter how potent our desire or longing is. Sometimes every inch in our body bemoans and laments strong feelings for someone and having to silence it. So don’t silence it: write about it, pray about it, sing about it but know when it’s time to put the pen down and walk away. Peace is found when we allow the paradox to be just exactly as it is. Sometimes we expect total clarity with zero doubt, believing it to be an indication that we should stay in a relationship or go back when perfect resolution isn’t there. But that is deceptive, perfectionistic and not very self-compassionate. Then there are the times you realise love isn’t enough and you have to do hard things like leaving.

In the end remind yourself, that just because the space their love left is still hollow, it isn’t a sign that your lives must be intertwined. That means learning to let go of control and living in the tension – wanting but not having, missing but not making what you miss a reality. Our feelings should not surprise or scare us – they are but a glorious, devastating testament to the sheer power of connection.

So what does it mean to move on? I guess that looks different for everyone. For some people it may mean deleting their number or unfriending them on Facebook, for another person it may mean choosing to stop asking about them and for another it may mean going to the places that remind you most of them but making new memories there. Disconnecting the connection is a road overgrown and we must all learn how to travel down it.

Maybe moving on doesn’t look like waiting for change, hoping for that ‘I was wrong’ apology or the day they come back fighting for you. Maybe moving on will never just happen with time. Letting them go is letting go of more than memories and the photographs painted on the inside of your mind. It is letting go of the safety of arms you carved into your own, the sweet dispositions and wide-eyed gazes that only you knew the meaning of and the connection that echoed the largeness of life. Moving on is the daily choice to not carry that love, or loss or that person as your identity.

Maybe moving on isn’t about unloving, and moving on in this way can sound dangerous and feels like losing. But maybe moving on in this way is the bravest thing we can do: to not fear admitting how much love still remains, yet not pursuing that love anymore. Maybe moving on looks a lot like courage; believing that there is a greater cause to live by than our fears.

Maybe moving on is choosing not to shape the memories into our bones – not to live in the past, not to relive the past. Choosing ‘now.’ Choosing to surround yourself with those who can love you well, to remind you that all love is not lost because love is not that person.

And we’ll be okay.

“To touch and feel each thing in the world, to know it by sight and by name,
and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone,
it can be recognized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to possess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been.”

– Nicole Krauss

Co-written with Sandra.

a) the fear of knowing yourself

b) the power that it gives the person we are being vulnerable with

Being vulnerable, whether that’s apologising or confessing a fear, mistake or insecurity requires a level of self-reflection and it is terrifying to go into your own darkness.  By sharing that with another person we’re taking a huge emotional risk by placing this sacred piece of our soul in their hand. A piece that they may not know how to handle with care. A piece they can either be compassionate and gentle with or that they can totally break into fragments if they react in disgust or rejection to our vulnerability. So vulnerability is hard because knowing my own darkness is agonising and also because taking someone deep into that darkness means they can confirm our worst fear – that we’re too dark to be loved or worthy of love. And that is a kind of pain that can leave the most damaging of scars.

But I think there is also another part that we miss which makes vulnerability seem so dangerous and uncertain.

When I take someone into that darkness and I reveal a part of me that is wounded or hurting,  an unspoken level of accountability is forged. Especially if I deeply love the person with whom I’m being vulnerable with, which is normally the case, because love requires that I do whatever it takes to be the best for them. So it follows that if I am ready to share a shortcoming, I am ready to try to move away from it.

Most of the time, vulnerability in any relationship will happen when we’re apologising, trying to explain our actions to someone or trying to help them understand why we reacted in a certain way. It usually means that the very thing we’re being vulnerable about probably affects the person that we are being vulnerable to.

By sharing this with them and releasing it into the open and into the light, I can no longer say I didn’t know about my own inadequacies. I can no longer turn a blind eye or ignore it. More importantly, I can no longer hide from it because now another soul can see. I am faced with one choice – confront it, fight it and grow.

I think that’s an incredibly scary thing about vulnerability – more than the emotional exposure, it’s the place that the emotional exposure thrusts us. And where is that? A place that means we must choose to be different and change.

Vulnerability is hard because “despair is more comforting than hope.” In the pit of my own darkness I am free to languish in hopelessness and sorrow, but once I am vulnerable, whether I’m received with compassion or not, I have no excuse to remain in my tattered fig leaves rather than animal skin. The fear is that: ‘What if it takes me too long to change? What if they give up on me?’ This is when the shame creeps in and like our forefather, Adam, we want to run.

Vulnerability creates accountability and that’s a huge responsibility to shoulder.

Perhaps that’s why vulnerability can be much easier in retrospect, sharing wounds that have been and gone. Being vulnerable in the moment, being vulnerable about the very brokenness that still breaks you so well, really is the biggest risk. And here is the kicker: ‘What if, by revealing my shame or weakness, so that I may be known,  I’m actually giving them the reason to walk away from me?’

Maybe this is why vulnerability feels like weakness; not just because of the exposure but because of the position of responsibility it puts us in where there is no more space for blaming others and pointing fingers. I must own the story of my weakness.

Vulnerability doesn’t guarantee anything. It isn’t a miracle in a bottle. Yes, it is ultimately a risk that can leave us naked and alone, but without it we have no connection.

So there will come a time, when we think of the past; every single time trust was offered to someone in vulnerability and was irretrievably broken, when we think of the present, the people in our life we are called to love as our own soul and when we think of the future, the kind of love we want our life to profess and we are compelled to ask: “is vulnerability worth it?”

What if staying and being vulnerable with those trusted souls in our lives breaks our plan? Everything comes at a cost, and though waters may rise and vulnerability may fail us along with those we trust, if love is the fulfillment of the law, then there is no cost that is wasted. Nothing is wasted for love – may our souls never forget to wear this God-breathed truth like second skin.

Click here to read part 1 of our vulnerability series!

Photo courtesy of  Zachary Snellenberger

There is a question that I believe can transform our relationships, a question we need to all ask each other more:

How can I comfort you?

Above all, remember “if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves…Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself.” (Philippians 2)

It is the comfort God has lavished on us that calls us to comfort others. Because of the pain we’ve felt, we no longer have to be strangers to the pain of another. When we choose to walk through the difficult times with Him by surrendering our ego and emptying ourself, we can receive the tenderness and gentleness of His healing presence. When we experience the power within His humility that invites, the power within His soft touch that had no fear in gently touching the blind or lame, nor writing carefully in the sand to help another; we will know how to comfort others out of our own ache.

Yet how often do I ask my loved ones how they need to be comforted? How often do I wonder how they receive comfort best? How often do I pay attention to learn which actions or words resonate deeply with them and which don’t? How often am I quick to comfort those in my life in the way I like to be comforted, neglecting that they are not me? Comfort has a language of its own and there is something undeniably powerful in a friend who knows how to speak the language of comfort that your soul understands, like feeling that everything you lost in the pain is coming back to you.

“The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are.”  Stephen Covey

I still remember the day I found out that I had to withdraw from medical school. I remember wanting nothing more than to run from the torment of failure as I felt the foundation that I had built my dreams, hopes and even identity crumble. That was the same day I tasted comfort, like the Promised Land dripping of milk and honey in the midst of a wilderness, in a way I had never known before.

My friend stayed with me, cried with me, wrapped me in a red blanket and sang Psalm 13 to me.

“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?…But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” 

Divine comfort took on flesh in my friend’s faithfulness to stay. This Psalm embodies the true unsurpassed beauty of comfort. Though it may not change our circumstances, though it may not take away the pain, it strengthens our heart to praise in defiance of the moment. True comfort is a fortress against wailing winds and the fearful elements of disaster that threaten to swallow our home. Because my friend stayed, I know that it takes an embrace and a shirt to stain with mascara and tears, to remember to breathe, find a moment to be still – just like that, I settle, soften and make space for the pain. The harsh voice of judgement drops to a whisper and I remember again that as much as I want to stop the madness and control the chaos, I can ask for the grace to let go through the healing found in comfort. Together with those who are long-suffering enough to bear our burdens, who choose to decrease as He increases in them by comforting us, we walk slowly into the mystery. The mystery that more than answers or solutions people desire comfort. More than fleeing from a broken and contrite heart, refusing the suffering, God desires our surrender. Surrender is not defeat, but victory. To learn how to comfort and to be willing to receive comfort from one another is how we win.

“You cannot be too gentle, too kind. Shun even to appear harsh in your treatment of each other. Joy, radiant joy, streams from the face of him who gives and kindles joy in the heart of him who receives. All condemnation is from the devil. Never condemn each other…instead of condemning others, strive to reach inner peace.” St Seraphim of Sarov

Sometimes comfort comes to us in unexpected packages; His is the gift of his own life within us, sharing His own joy and love in the midst of the confusion and anxiety that encloses us, in the midst of all the ways we try to escape from the pain outside of His life in us.

With His life in me, I am given a choice, to waste my pain and the pain of others or to give and accept comfort freely. And so as with all of life, it is always choices such as these that determine where we are going and how our own journey moulds us and influences those around us. It is a choice to be a healing presence to others. With this choice, pray to be sensitive to how the person before you longs to be comforted. Be brave enough to give sacrificially to meet each other’s need to be comforted and to ask: how can I comfort you?

“Love is not contingent on our wholeness. Love is with us in our shame, our fear, our weakness, and is with us through it. And Love has the final word”

“What does it mean to become a healing presence? And probably more important, how do we increase our ability to do that? I think already you can see that this definition is an operational definition for love delivered; love on the street; love in our lives; love with each other.

Let’s look at what a healing presence is. It means that when someone, you or me or some other human, has done something to give me strength or hope. And you might ask in your life recently, who in your life did give you strength or hope when you felt in need a little? And what were the ingredients of that? How was that done? That’s the way we learn how to do that for each other. It means that I do something and give someone else what Christ gives through me. Grace has a life of its own. And in that sense, healing can become contagious. Others feel it, experience, and see it, and then perhaps do it a little more themselves.

Christ is our physician; our complete healer. And He wants us to be His humanity on this earth for each other, to the extent that we can. We’re His healing presence for each other or not. We are a healing presence to others when we give them strength; we have an encounter with them. We give them strength when we give them hope. They leave us, whether it’s a very brief or a sustained encounter, with strength and hope.”

Albert Rossi

I sit close by my sister; yet not close enough, for the Atlantic lies between.
I hold out my hands as she drops word by word into these palms.

She says, he shot himself while driving on the freeway.
She says, all I ever thought was how he had his own friends, how he never needed me.
She says, you know I wish I wasn’t so obsessed with myself.
She says, what if I had been there, what if I had listened?

I watch a beautiful woman cry in the arms of my mother. I watch how my mother gracefully listens, pours out love all over her, holds her up with the truth of who she is. And I realize, my mother’s hospitality was never just an invitation into her home but an invitation into her heart.

I think of dark nights that I have known, dark nights of tears and demons of despair, and the faithful friend who has held the broken girl in me. How she listened silently to my every word, let her own heart break for my sadness. In those dark hours I am known, in those dark hours I am loved.

Amidst the cries of a multitude of people longing for more than superficial friendships, longing to be known to their core, longing to be loved, I marvel at how we are made; with all the auditory apparatus we need that we may take in the spoken thoughts of one another.

We are made for more than just acknowledging the sound waves of each other.

We are made with the ability to listen.

We are made for this kind of worship.

It is only through listening that we come to know others. It is only when we know others that we can love. Because listening is an invitation, it is welcoming the story of another into our heart. To be welcomed without an agenda to change or manipulate, without judgment or need to prove wrong or right.

When we listen as friends, we listen as the curious lovers who want to unearth the roots behind every statement, who want to examine the frames hanging on our walls like an exhibition and who want to read between the lines of every story. When friends take the time to listen, they see that we are all just stories. And in each of our story there are great tragedies and great adventures, great romances and great heartbreaks. The beauty of the story is that there is no right or wrong. A friend listens to let the story unfold, that they may understand. A friend listens that they may ask the right questions, the questions that no one may have dared to ask before.

Tell me, where does it hurt the most?

Tell me, why do you feel this way?

Tell me all the words you never said to him but you wish you could

And the most important questions a friend can ask:

What do you need from me right now?

What did I do today that made you feel appreciated?

What did I say that made you feel unnoticed?

But without listening out for the pauses in the story, the place where one chapter ends and the other chapter begins, the sentences that were just too hard to complete, we will never learn how to ask. When friends forfeit the task of asking, as if the answer we will hear is the next world wonder, then we forfeit the gift we could give each other, a gift we all need. The gift of knowing there is no answer I must carry alone.

Friendships begin only when we choose to invest, only when we choose to listen. It is only when we listen do we learn to ask, to search, to dig to find the diamond in the rough hiding in each others unknown caverns. Friends are the ones who remind us how to shine once again after years of burying it deep.

When we approach friendships as a means to appease our boredom, as a quick fix of temporary excitement and pleasure, we fail to establish deep, meaningful connections. And we are made for more than isolation, we are made for connection.

What stories do our friendships tell of us?

Are we fabricating tales of hearts experienced in the art of walking away when the knowledge of another gets tough?

Do our lives tell the tale of humans who merely co-exist in each other’s space, humans too self-focused to listen?

“Friendships create a beautiful tapestry of love.”
– Henri Nouwen

Or are we creating beautiful tapestries of love?

If I were to ask you, who is your closest friend? Would you answer me, “no one”?

Why?

“For, in good truth, a friend is more to be longed for than the light; I speak of a genuine one. And wonder not: for it were better for us that the sun should be extinguished, than that we should be deprived of friends; better to live in darkness, than to be without friends. And I will tell you why. Because many who see the sun are in darkness, but they can never be in tribulation, who abound in friends. I speak of spiritual friends, who prefer nothing to friendship. Such was Paul, who would willingly have given his own soul, even though not asked, nay would have plunged into hell for them. With so ardent a disposition ought we to love.”

– St. John Chyrsostom

The “Lord is between you and me forever.”
Samuel 20:23

The day you came beside me to sleep on the floor was Tuesday, July 21st. That was the day my summer burst at the seams. You let me in on the secret of friendship;

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

That night you didn’t see me with your eyes but you saw me with your heart.

To be friends with someone is to see courage where everyone else may see weakness. To be a friend is to see someone who is trying where everyone may see someone who should be better.

It is kind, soft words in a world where they run on short supply and where all you hear are the voices in your head that insist you should not be this way, that you are not good enough, and that the only solution is to keep trying harder, to never allow your weakness to show. But that night on the floor as I cried, you saw me as beautiful still, like the tears were water for a row of lilies to bloom. And you held on to hope for me as I felt my fingers loosen their grip and slip.

We need each other, vulnerable and exposed.

We need floor moments like these in friendship. To hold a mirror with one hand that reveals all the frailties and shortcomings, but to also hold out the other hand ready to go on this journey of healing with you all the way to the Father’s house; no matter how crooked or narrow the Calvary road becomes, all the way to the foot of the Cross – our God at His most vulnerable.

Friendship allows us to see our darkness and the darkness of others as a pathway to know the Father – not a barrier to his love. Perhaps He is not threatened by our darkness, so we no longer need to with each other. Perhaps our bleeding out with those who have earned the right to hear it is the best thing for our hearts – because then we can be filled with new Eucharistic blood.

That night you were a mirror to the parts of myself I spent so long trying to run from and pretend like they weren’t there because I thought they were too much to look at.

There is something to be said when someone is willing to make sense of all you are, your internal wars, your run-down castles, your expanding galaxies and your untamed, untrodden paths. What more do we want than to be seen, to be understood in a continuum where we did not want to understand or see ourselves for fear of what we would uncover? Yet, I tried to push you away, to shut you out with walls of silence and tears, with sitting away from you on the floor. And yet, that night you did not leave, but you chose to stay when there was nothing I could offer you. You chose to fight for a ravaged heart, so you lay on the floor beside me and told me words like streams to my desert soul:

That you love this broken girl.

There is something to be said of the marks people can make on another soul, the fingerprints they leave from where hands ran along the jagged edges.

To be a friend is a lifetime of savouring every sharp point, every rough texture as lost treasure. A lifetime of leaving marks that tell stories of staying together. Staying in summers and in winters too, even when they’ve been too cold. Staying when the birds have sung and the plants have been in bloom and when the garden has run wild with weeds and tall yellow grass. The garden of a soul is not yours alone, it belongs to a man’s friends. For it takes more than a pair of hands to pull out overgrown weeds and plant a row of sunflowers in the space where deep roots of lies spread. And when there is a storm, there is no fear to let the waters rise as you stand in the rain; in time the seeds friendship’s sown will grow.

The secret of friendship sounds a lot like a fight song at times…

We sing…

As we lie on the cold hardened floor of our lives, wrapped in the thick of darkness’ untidy death grip, I will not let you go. I will choose to see you with my heart and not just my eyes. I will choose to hear your words and your tears, and I will not be afraid to walk down into the garden you call wreckage. I will choose to write lovely all across your back until the lies no longer compare. I will ensure that you remember that “you are dark” always comes with the clause that “you are lovely”. I will bring to your remembrance that even the darkness will not be dark to you (psalm 139:12). I will choose to enter into your sorrow and suffering rather than demand that you deny yourself and enter into my joy. I will choose to fight to understand your every complexity, that I may grow to know and serve you well. And for every moment your heart screams ugly, I will choose to echo the truth right back in, beauty.

Because precious sister, love is a choice, and I will choose to love you, the way Jonathan loved David, the way he loved him as his own soul. I will choose to feast on the precious gift of friendship, where our souls may collide that together we may enter into His rest.

To be seen by you is frightful indeed. To strip off my layers, let you see me raw, let you see me whole frightens me to the core. Yet with your gentleness, all my fears halt to a lie, and I realise that you know me. To be known is to be loved, and you love me so well.

We are pursuers of each other, pursuing to know the depth and height of each other’s heart. I promise to know you. I promise not to laugh at you when you are naked and like Genesis 2:25, we will stand together, naked souls, unashamed. And I will not let my words become a hollow noise, but I will entangle this promise in the actions of my daily life.

Just when I think I have tasted the best of this feast, I realise, joyfully, there is so much more to learn. More knitting, more weaving of souls.

“The resurrection is coming.”

And with those words you fearlessly revelled and embraced my brokenness as the means to victory and wiped away any shame with hands that held me close. The same shame that I used to push you away from coming any closer because I did not believe you deserved to see this mess, you deserved better from a friend and you did not deserve to carry this sadness. Yet you called it an honour. You spoke life, love, truth and beauty into the deafening echo of brokenness.

Because of you, my true friend, I am not a victim of brokenness but rather experiencing redemption through brokenness. On the floor the fear made me want hide away from it. And on that same floor you made the broken beautiful with these words:

Do not be afraid or weakened by your darkness.

To be a friend is to let someone love you the way you would want to love them. To accept you will hurt them and they will be hurt by you whilst never forgetting the commitment you made to sacrifice anything to heal each other.

I will never forget that night on the floor when you came down beside me and met me at my lowest. When you were a picture of how hope does not disappoint because of the love that God has poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. You poured out your love in the broken girl. The girl whose every dry bone screamed “you’re not good enough as you are. You need to be perfect. Don’t give up…otherwise you won’t be perfect.” In your embrace, the dry bones cried “Live!” and the broken girl had a place to let go and belong.

As St. Ambrose says, a place to “know, O beautiful soul, that you are the image of God. Know that you are the glory of God. Know, then, O mortal, your greatness, and be vigilant”. In your arms I found a place of safety. A place other than perfection’s hostage image of all the ways I will never be enough – other than shame’s iron hold and ten-tonne shield. A place other than isolation’s secrecy and muffled silence, until I could see something other than every flaw and imperfection.

We all need help and perspective in learning how to love the broken girl within each one of us. We all need friends to see and celebrate our truest self – the broken girl who is actually more whole than she ever thought because she chose to endure, to be resilient and grow.

When I could not come out of hiding you came to find me. This is the feast of friendship. A halfway home ’till kingdom come. Till we shall feast anew and fully in the blessed kingdom of God.

“What I know about living
is the pain is never just ours.
Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo,
so I keep listening for the moment the grief becomes a window,
when I can see what I couldn’t see before
through the glass of my most battered dream
I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind
and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.

So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin
don’t try to put me back in.
Just say, “Here we are” together at the window
aching for it to all get better
but knowing there is a chance
our hearts may have only just skinned their knees,
knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming

let me say right now for the record,
I’m still gonna be here
asking this world to dance,
even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet.

You, you stay here with me, okay?
You stay here with me.

Raising your bite against the bitter dark,
your bright longing,
your brilliant fists of loss.
Friend, if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other,
my god that is plenty
my god that is enough
my god that is so so much for the light to give
each of us at each other’s backs
whispering over and over and over,
“Live. Live. Live.”

Andrea Gibson

Co-written with Makrina.

He replied:

“If you see a humble man with a pure heart, that would be greater than all the visions; because through that vision, you would see the invisible God. Do not ask for a better vision.”

If seeing just one godly man can have such a profound impact on a person, then how glorious would it be to see three godly men living in unbroken communion and mutually offering their lives to Him?

Reading through 1 Samuel, I was awed to read about three such men reflecting the beauty of the Holy Trinity. They are only mentioned in two verses, and to my knowledge they are not mentioned again in the Bible:

“…three men going up to God at Bethel will meet you, one carrying three young goats, another carrying three loaves of bread, and another carrying a skin of wine. And they will greet you and give you two loaves of bread, which you shall receive from their hands.” 1 Samuel 10:3-4

Who Are They?

The first thing that is said about these men is that they are “going up to God at Bethel.”

What a beautiful verse!

How great would it be to be described by nothing else but how focused you were on pursing God? These men were not described by their relationships, their occupation, or even where they came from (which was very traditional in those times) but they were simply described by their pursuit of God.

Bethel, which means house of God, is significant because it was one of the first places where God met with His chosen people. This is actually the same place Jacob dreamed of a ladder reaching to heaven, having angels ascending and descending on it and having the Lord standing above it. (Genesis 28:12-13)

It almost sounds like these three men are on their way to climb this ladder to ‘go up to’ God.

Living in Communion

I can imagine that these men held one another accountable and encouraged each other in Him as they made this journey up to God together. They were not wise in their own eyes and knew the power of having a companion so as not to travel alone (Ecclesiastes 4:12).

Truly did the Psalmist speak of men such as these:

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is or brothers to dwell together in unity! Psalm 133:1

It also seems as though these men of faith had all things in common. Surely there was one goat and one loaf of bread for each of them rather than one man having three goats and another having three loaves of bread to himself. Each brought what they had and made up for what the other lacked.

Furthermore, they had one spirit as they did anything together; it was never one of them doing an action individually. The following phrase makes this clear: “they will greet you and give you two loaves of bread.” They didn’t live in communion with just themselves, but from their abundance they were able to provide for the for needs of those they came into contact with. They only kept for themselves what they needed.

Thinking about how these men might have greeted those in their path I can only think they were genuine, warm, and heartfelt. They were the type of people to ask you how you were and would actually care to hear your response. They were the type of men that didn’t just say “God bless you” to people without actually being a source of blessing to them (as witnessed by their free gift of bread).

Worshiping in Spirit and Truth

These men were worshiping God the way He intended them to worship Him.

It’s likely that the goats they were taking with them were intended to be sacrificed – one for each of them – as a sin offering:

“or if his sin which he has committed comes to his knowledge, he shall bring as his offering a kid of the goats, a male without blemish. And he shall lay his hand on the head of the goat, and kill it at the place where they kill the burnt offering before the Lord. It is a sin offering.” (Leviticus 4:23-24)

They were not only worshipping God in their relationship with one another, with their giving of themselves physically and emotionally to others, but they were also giving God glory by living a life of repentance.

These men remind me of Melchizedek in that they also prophetically brought bread and wine to offer to God as a prefigurement of the Eucharist. They also seem to be “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life” (Hebrews 7:3) but worship God continually.

What beautiful men!

We are all called to be like our Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ.

Along with that though, we are called to live in harmony and communion with one another and to be an icon of the Holy Trinity. It was the unity that these men had that made them special. Their relationship with one another was a reflection of God Himself.

These three men of faith are a beautiful example of perichoresis, which is a term used to describe how the three Persons of the Trinity are One God. Perichoresis is the divine dance of Love where there is a complete and mutual giving and receiving. It involves Persons in harmony having perfect consideration for each other

Lord, give us to reflect Your unspeakable beauty!