My Fight with Vulnerability
[Guest post by Kerri-Anne Lafu: Unfortunately, sharing your vulnerability with the world is a problem I think a lot of women go through. But it’s even more important to try to share it with God!]
These last few months I think God has been challenging me on the need to be real, vulnerable and honest with myself, Him, and others. I, like a lot of people, have massive insecurities about showing people who I really am.
Instead of loving others and being with others fully, I’ve limited who and how I’ve been based on the parts of me that I think people would accept.
It was through a hard season that we went through as a family (and are still going through now) that I’m really learning the need to be just me all of me in all of my relationships — especially my relationship with God.
When my mum got sick it took me a long time to process what was going on, and my faith was really tested. I went from being so reliant on God, sharing everything with Him at the start of last year to my relationship with Him changing to only talking to Him about the parts of my life that were going well.
I was really resentful towards God because I thought that because of what we had already been through as a family, it wasn’t fair that my mum was going through what she is now. I began doing the same in my relationships — only talking about what was going on at home in a factual basis.
I intellectualized it and made sure no one knew how much I was actually struggling.
I think I had even fooled myself into believing that I was okay when I obviously was not okay. After hearing a message on faith and the need to keep believing despite our struggles, a real talk with one of my siblings about our fears about our mum’s health, and then reading books on grace and vulnerability, I realized I had a problem.
I decided that from then on, if someone asked about my mum and how she was doing I would give them a real answer, no matter how awkward I made them feel, or emotional I felt doing so I would.
It was something small but I knew that it was a start; I knew I also had to be real with God, and so I decided to give it to Him and surrender all of the ways I was trying to deal with it myself.
I gave Him my anxiety, fears, doubt, frustration and disappointment, my intellectual reasoning of it all and my hiding from my emotions. It’s been a journey for all of us and my mum’s doing well, considering the doctors have said there’s not much else they can do since her cancer is rare and nothing has helped.
My mum is my hero and is an amazing woman of faith that continues to show me through her vulnerability in this journey of hers the need to be real and honest with those in our lives and with God.
I’m hopeful that, although we don’t know the end to this journey, that we have a God that does.
And by holding his hand no matter how much I want to let go of it, He will get us through it and make all things work together for our good. So for now I’m doing my best to be as real as I can possibly be in all that I do — especially those things that I’m struggling with, no matter how uncomfortable and hard it is.
To make the most of what God has done for me through Jesus would be living free, and living free to me means living vulnerably with God and others out of the revelation that my value is secure in His love for me.
Kerri-Anne Lafu just finished university & works in sales. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand with her family. She’s on a mission to help girls realize who they are in God & blogs regularly at awkwardisoverrated.
