Staying Open

I apologize for having taken so long to write something. My conscious (Hannah) finally got me to get back on this. There are always a dozen or so things I want to discuss and write about, but gathering thoughts from the far corners of my mind can be mentally taxing and emotionally exhausting. But I’m grateful for the people who love me enough to make me do hard things.

To start off, I wanted to take a little walk down memory lane with you. Let’s go back to say, preschool. Remember those days? Naps we didn’t want to take, snacks that were unfairly rationed (I still remember Maddie always managed to get the bigger fruit slices. . . I’m not bitter), sidewalk chalk and finger paint that always ended up on faces and clothes . Those were the days. The highlight for me was when we were let out into the yard, especially after rain or sprinklers—because I ALWAYS managed to find at least one snail.

Snails are most fascinating creatures; in my opinion, the closest thing to alien life on our planet. That’s probably the reason I have an irrational love for them. But when I think of snails, the first thing probably comes to mind is their eyes. And what did we (or at least I) do? Poked ‘em. Yup, anything willing to put its eyes that far from its head deserves to be poked. And they always shot back into the head. Patiently; we waited. Once the little snail starts to feel safe, the eyes come back out. Then we inevitable poke them again. And again. . . and again.

I promise this is relevant and has more depth than childhood memories of inflicting pain on unsuspecting creatures. The past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about vulnerability and the pain that often comes with it. Some of these thoughts came from my own experiences over the past weeks and others from those of friends.

Snails are a perfect example of how we react when we are vulnerable. Snails are willing to “risk it” to quite literally “put themselves out there”. We do it too; most of us don’t do it constantly, but only when we feel extra confident or safe. However, when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable we inevitably make ourselves susceptible to pain. I mean, that's part of the definition of vulnerability.

When we get hurt, we— just like snails—pull back. We retreat. But often times, we are a lot less willing to try again. Snails are willing to try again, normally within a matter of seconds. We tend to not be so willing to venture out. We go into a survival mode; we put up walls, we block out the pain. But as Brené Brown points out’ we can’t selectively numb emotion; blocking out the pain and keeping it out means we also block out the good. . . just as long as we block out the pain. When bad things happen to us, we tend to spend so much time dwelling on what happened and protecting ourselves from it never happening again that we actually destroy the potential of anything great happening.

Being alive means we will experience all kinds of things; joy, love, pain and loss – it's all part of life. While it may be our natural reaction to shut down just because we got hurt, it isn’t the right or healthy thing to do (though I’d be extremely hypocritical were I to say I have never done it). When we shut down, we might prevent the bad from coming in, but we also prevent the good.

While there are many ways to be vulnerable, the place I see it most often and in greatest amounts is in relationships. It is with people and particularly people we love or want to love that we are willing to be most vulnerable. The problem being if we are vulnerable with the people we love the most, it will likely also cause more pain. We tend to get hurt. Love is a battlefield. None of us get through unscathed.

C.S. Lewis

CS Lewis spoke to this vulnerability caused by love: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

It is important to accept that to know love is to know pain. Both of which play important parts of life.

One of my very best friends, a man who has been through a lot of pain both personally and in his relationships, at times struggles to find the worth of opening up. “It’s not worth it, it hurts too much.” I understand this; really, I do. I have been hurt profoundly, and that is much more likely when we let ourselves be vulnerable and open our hearts to others.

But to my close friend and to anyone else who may doubt I want to assure you that it is worth it. The joy and satisfaction we can feel through these relationships is much greater than the pain that may come from them. I know this to be true. I have seen and felt it time and time again.

When we accept that pain is a part of life and to an extent embrace it, we begin to free ourselves from the chains that bind us and the fear that paralyzes us and thus step into a greater, much more vibrant and colorful world. This is called moving forward with faith. Pain will come; that is not up for debate, but we must choose let joy in.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from past experiences and pains. Of course we can and we should. But it is dangerous to live in those experiences and to sulk in past pains.

Living our dreams, living our soul’s calling means taking risks, and part of taking risks means some things not working out.

The Divine is stronger than any failure, but consider that some failures are divinely sent. It is often the trials we go through that make us the people we need to be in order to achieve and live our dreams. And yet we spend so much time avoiding the trials that we end up living an unrealized, unfulfilled life; a fate worse than death.

If you want a hard body, you have to work out. No questions asked. If you want the that 4.0 GPA, you have to work for it . No questions asked. If you want to love, you have to be open. If you want to make your dreams come true, you have to risk. But no one gets it right the first time, and most don’t gets it right the 100th time.

We need to stop counting how many times we’ve tried, and just try UNTIL it happens.

Life is not asking us to curl up into a ball because we are scared; it is asking us to step up, even though we are scared and to welcome in new possibility by taking a risk.

If you aren’t living your dreams, consider that you have no idea what it really takes or feels like to do so. So how could you possibly know what it takes until you have arrived? The only real way to know this is by taking advice from people who have already achieved what you want to achieve.  Everyone else is just guessing.

So I just want to ask you (yes, you), are you hurt? Have you pulled away? Have you closed off? Maybe it’s only been two days; maybe it’s been 50 years, but start to let the walls come down. Trust that there are those who will always love you and mean well. Trust that God will be there. He is there. He will help you and protect you as you trust in him.

Will you be brave and let the walls down today? Will you stay strong and keep your heart open?