Hey everyone! I’m going to skip the subheadings today because this one is more of a letter from my heart and less like a devotion. It’s a little different. Enjoy.
I just got off the phone with a friend I’ve known for 30 years from my NYC days. It’s so refreshing to talk with someone I would share almost anything with.
In our various relationships, we don’t open up the same way to all people. For example, someone we meet for the first time, let’s say, in a grocery store, the conversation is what we call “small talk.” You know, we talk about the weather, the price of avocados, or some other common experience. We hold back sharing personal things because, well, we just don’t know the person.
There are some people we see regularly and talk to quite a bit, but the conversation stays pretty basic. Because we know the person, the conversations extend past small talk into talking about our families, where we grew up, what we love, what we hate, where we are going on vacation this year, and stuff like that. These are people we enjoy talking with, but we still hold back sharing anything too personal because we don’t know them that well.
There are some people who, even though we have not known them for long, we have a great chemistry with. We find ourselves opening up quite a bit to them. But not too much.
The people we open up to the most are the people who we have known for a good length of time and trust has been developed. They are people who we have experienced life with. They’ve seen us in a variety of different settings; they’ve seen us at our best and our worst. Those closest to us may be a spouse, child, parent, sibling, or longtime friend.
One thing I’ve noticed in relationships is that the closer we are with a person, the more enjoyable our time is with them. It’s not that we don’t enjoy meeting new people—well, some of us really don’t—but it’s just that building relationships with people we don’t know well requires a certain emotional toil.
It’s a little like driving in a busy city you don’t know well. You just aren’t sure where you are going. It can be exhausting. But driving in a city we have lived in for years is a joy. Because we know exactly where we are going, we can concentrate on the beautiful things.
In my life, my absolute closest companion is my dear wife, Tiffany, who I fell in love with and married in 1990 when she was just 19 years old. Beyond my wife I would say I’m close with my two girls, who are now young adults. We’ve had so many deep interesting conversations through the years, and we tend to share many of our weaknesses with each other. Then there’s my mom and dad, my brothers, my close friends and mentors who I open up quite a bit to at times. There are also people I was close to but am not anymore for whatever reason. Sometimes it’s just that the person moved away, or the friendship hits a plateau (that happens).
Who are the people in your life you’ve been closest to? Pause for a moment and consider why you are close. Why is it so enjoyable to spend time with them? I think most of us would say that we can just be ourselves around the person. We feel safe, accepted and loved. This kind of relational environment makes it easy to open up, right?
It’s interesting how, as humans, we naturally crave opening up to others. Now, we may not be opening up fully to anyone, but it’s not because we don’t long to. Everyone wants to be heard and understood. The person we are inside, the whole great big inner universe of our thoughts and feelings—we want someone else to see!
The reason we feel lonely at times is that we don’t have any relationships with people where we can really pour out our souls. Oh we might have plenty of people in our lives, and plenty of conversations, but there’s no one we are bearing our soul to. If you are in a place of loneliness, I empathize with you. That’s a hard place to be. I pray that the Lord will guide you.
What I’m saying is that we are built for close relationships. But what about people who live alone in a cabin in the woods and avoid any kind of social interaction? That is a special case, and I imagine there is probably a story of hurt under the surface. Even fierce introverts—like myself—crave deep interaction with people. I’m not saying I want to be around people all the time—no, no, no! I love people, but too much interaction exhausts me. But as much as I find my introvert time blissful, it would be meaningless if I didn’t have people to share my inner world with. I would just feel “lost in my own head,” as they say.
Here’s the thing. Whether we have lots of close friends, or none, the truth is that no human being can know us fully. It’s an impossibility. I don’t mean we shouldn't try to open up as much as possible to someone, but there are certain limitations.
For example, words are limited. It is extremely hard to articulate with words all that we are thinking and feeling. The heart is like deep waters and, often, we don’t even know all that is happening inside of us. We are constantly changing and evolving. Even if we were stuck on an island with one person we wouldn’t know each other fully because there will always be certain thoughts and feelings we keep to ourselves—or just don’t know how to express. We should strive for close relationships but it’s good to understand that nobody will ever know us fully—at least in this life.
Before you sink into loneliness and depression at that thought, I’ll quickly come to what I want to share with you: God sees us, hears us, and knows us fully.
His capacity for empathy is incomparable. He is never preoccupied and not paying attention to us. He never misunderstands us or misreads our intentions. Even when we aren’t doing a great job explaining ourselves to Him, He understands fully, because He’s not even dependent on our words to understand. He perceives our thoughts (Psalm 139). The complexities of our inner world are clear to Him. He reads every shade of our emotions.
If a person is an atheist, God perceives all of his or her thoughts the same as He does a child of God. But there is no intimacy in the relationship, obviously. It takes two for that. So in our relationship with the Lord God we experience closeness—don’t miss this!—when we open up to Him out of the depths of who we are. As I mentioned, there are certain things we might not share with any person, even people we are close to. But with God we can share it all.
Closeness with God isn’t a mystical experience that happens to us randomly. It happens as the result of opening up. Can you pause for a moment and be encouraged by that? Be encouraged because what I’m saying is something we can all do. We don’t need to be super spiritual or pray for 12 hours or fast 40 days. We can come close to God by opening up all of who we are.
As I often remind myself, the Lord already knows everything about me so why would I hold anything back? Why would I not be entirely honest? My friend, open up to the Lord your God and hide nothing. We don’t need to hide our sins. He is merciful and will forgive. Christ’s blood will wash us.
Let me suggest a few things to open up to the Lord about. These are questions to ponder and talk to God about. Start today. Like, now. Maybe read each question, and pause to say a few things to the Lord. Then, go to the next one.
What things have you done in your life that you are ashamed of? What are you most afraid of? What do you think the Lord thinks about you? What do you most hate about yourself? What aspect of God most troubles you? What is your worst insecurity? What are your sins that you long to overcome? What are your concerns about the future? What do you struggle with that others don’t seem to struggle with?
We might have a close friend ask us some of these things, but most of us would open up only partially. The questions are extremely personal. But with God we don’t need to filter anything at all.
My encouragement is to sit with these questions and talk to the Lord about each of them. Don’t dodge questions. Face each one with honesty. Tell the Lord exactly how you feel. Don’t tell Him what you think He wants to hear. Don’t offer Him a flowery answer with three Bible verses. Get raw and real. Don’t work through these questions in your journal, because everyone’s journal is at least partially filtered. Don’t pray out loud, unless you absolutely know you can’t be heard by anyone. Go to the secret closet and talk to the Father openly.
What happens when we start opening up the most secret parts of our heart to the Lord is that He fills those places with His grace. We don’t realize how these secret things in us, that we share with no one, weigh us down and make us feel distant from God. We may be happy on the surface, but the heart is heavy when it is holding back. Be totally open with the Lord your God who loves you and adores you. Let Him into every one of those hidden places where there lies guilt, shame, confusion, doubt, fear, anxiety, regret, and sin. When we bring these things out into the open we discover that the Father does not condemn us, but rather, He heals us.