God continues to teach me new lessons in transparency..sigh.  I’m feeling somewhat overexposed, just like Eve in the garden scrambling for something to hide behind.

A few weeks ago I attended a women’s discipleship luncheon where the speaker, Stephanie Henderson, challenged us to get raw with God, as David did in his weeping and even in his naked dancing. To let him hear and see the disheveled, bad-hair-day, broken weeping woman I often tend to hide in my proverbial closet.

I turned raw into an acronym to see if that would make it easier for me and you:

R is for real:

We need to get real, people. Let me start by saying I don’t believe that God uses our sin for his glory. God abhors sin. We can’t get real if we tell ourselves that our sin is ok just because we’re not perfect. It’s like saying boys will be boys and sanctioning whatever that entails.  Yes, we’re imperfect, but we are to model the perfect character of God as we grow and learn in him.

Having said that, I do believe that when we trust enough to expose our less than perfect persona, he can and does redeem a repented heart. How can God redeem what we’ve not exposed in trust to others? How can God redeem what we’ve tucked away hoping he won’t see it?

Here’s how I got real just last night:  I admitted that I have tried to be the perfect friend without allowing anyone to be a good friend to me.  I have believed the lie for many years that I had Jesus, my mom and my husband, so I didn’t really need messy, unruly, unpredictable friendships.

Truthfully, I can’t say I actually believed it.  I just told myself and others that lie so I wouldn’t get hurt. I’m learning most lies come from deep-seated hurt. Relationships sometimes hurt, but hurt must lead to forgiveness or the hurt never heals.

I thought I had forgiven, but I haven’t confessed my insecurities:

When I was a young girl, I was so weird.  I think people just didn’t know how to categorize me:  was I white? Mexican? Smart? Mentally challenged?  (Actually, I’m all of those…go figure.) I’m confessing that in many ways I’m still that hurt girl.

People shrink away from anomaly because they feel unsafe.  But our natural tendency to categorize in order to make sense of the world sometimes leads us to judge and to shun.

I was judged and shunned enough to wound soul deep, I’m discovering/ admitting.

I had no idea I was beautiful. Girls would get up and move to another table if I sat with them.  Boys would whistle and hook an arm around me if they caught me alone, then ridicule me when their friends were around.

I loved to go to school because I love to learn, but I hated the sick feeling in my stomach I got thinking about where I would sit at lunch or whether or I would be ridiculed because I didn’t wear the right thing in just the right cool way.

I became a studier of people (and fashion) out of a survival instinct. I was at once enchanted and petrified by them. Still am, actually.

But over time I internalized the hurt and developed low self-esteem, etc… the story of many of our lives, I know. But until last night I didn’t realize I was still carrying around that huge school-girl backpack full of apprehension regarding friendships.

As I’ve mentioned before, in the process of becoming beautiful through the blood of Christ, I thought I had gotten over all of that. But over time, although people are more drawn to my older more settled sense of self , I’ve still been keeping people and friends at arm’s length so they won’t hurt me.

Oh, I’m a great friend to them on the outside, listening to them and praying for them, but I don’t let them be a great friend to me so I won’t get hurt. If conversation steers toward me and all my messes, I am an expert defensive driver, dodging anything too personal to deflect attention.

And when I do get hurt despite all the road blocks I’ve put up, because we all hurt each other eventually, I can say, “See. That’s why.  They don’t really care about me.”

I tend to lose touch with people that try to get too close to me. That’s not a good friend. That’s not real friendship.

Sorry, truth is not always pretty; becoming beautiful sometimes has an ugly duckling phase.

God has been showing me this about myself as I pray for good friends: in order to really be a good friend, I have to let people in to my mess. I can’t be worrying that they’ll walk away from me if they see me be real.

Real sinful, real broken, real repented, real redeemed.

After-all, that’s how God sees me. That’s how he sees us.

What about you? Do you keep friends at arm’s length because you don’t want to get hurt?

Stay tuned for Part 2 of RAW ( A is for angry) tomorrow