A Community Aware
I could tell that she had a lot to say, but she hesitated.
Shame shuts her mouth and demands that she hold back the weighty words on her heart.
We stood in the doorway, in the place I love best in my home. The room that I intentionally designed to foster creative thoughts and mold interesting words. The place where I happily find myself sitting for hours thinking thoughtfully about what I want to share with the world. This room where I write, the very place where the tangled mess in my overwhelmed mind straightens out, lines up as if at attention to a greater authority than myself.
Writing, in many seasons of my life, is sometimes the only orderly thing that I can count on. These blank pages softly call out to me; they have always felt like a safe place to give myself to, free from judgment or ridicule.
Ironic.
Here, in this place where I freely give up words, she was intentionally keeping hers guarded.
“We keep close the embarrassing hurts in our soul, because they feel safer from judgment behind invisible bars, but these bars established to protect us from shame often lock us in with it.”
Bars are meant for prisons not places of refuge. They are designed to confine what is inside from reaching the world around it. Our shame prefers to travel with us and when we attempt to lock it away or bury it deep, we find ourselves joined with it in the depths.
The fears we fear most, the thoughts and emotions that haunt us, tightly gather around us day and night and we live in this invisible prison with shame. We may be surrounded by a number of people, but in our experience, we feel very alone.
“Often the very support that we need is found in the community unaware of our struggle...the community standing outside of our shame.”
But there is a beautiful hope available to each of us if we are willing to take notice. These magnificent moments of brief invitation, sacred and unique, swirling all around us if we are willing to see. In the commonplace activities that make up our day, we become challenged with the choice to see each other. More times than not my instinct is to look away, to trace a distraction or highly prioritize a nonessential. Because these brief invitations are shorter than a breath, much like inhaling deeply and then they are gone, we must train ourselves to be ready when they come.
A people ready to respond in love to the brief moments of invitation into another person's soul. When we choose to see each other instead of turning away, we will catch these moments like fireflies on a dark summer night, their glow lighting up the space between us making them visible.
I caught one in the doorway of a room built for sharing.
I recognized shame right away. I recognized an expression molded from my own haunting experiences. Wanting to speak, but holding in our mind a time when we finally removed our mask, only to be ill received at the masquerade.
These moments are powerful.
These brave attempts, when met with rejection only confirm what we already feel... failure. We are sure we will never allow it again. So we continue to live buried and isolated up to our eyeballs.
It is in this momentary interaction that I am profoundly reminded of the best thing.
“I want to be the kind of woman that stands resolutely with other women until they are ready to break free. ”
True commitment does not wrap up with a bow after a cup of coffee at a bagel shop. When I choose to love her from a place of deep sacrifice, I will fight to love her right where she stands... in the long term.
A relationship.
We are much more alike than we are different and if we paused to connect with the hurt found in another's eyes, we would see ourselves there too. Maybe we cannot fix the problems of this world, but we can compassionately offer those around us another way to live.
To live loved.
I can set aside the freezing effects of judgment to embrace the warmth and acceptance of true community that sees every part of us and loves us from head to toe. This community will often begin with our own invitations to be seen. Maybe this moment in the doorway is not that ironic after all.
Long ago I began to use that sweet calling from a blank page as healing balm to the shame that I felt in my own soul. Writing is not just a way to communicate for me, it is a vessel that God gave me long ago to carry away the hurts that threatened to get stuck in my heart. If this room filled with my own hurts created a warmth that welcomed a brief invitation, than I guess that makes sense to me now. All I can think in this moment right now is that God is so very faithful... so good.
I can choose to remember now.
I can remember, even in the common places, that I am her and she is me. We are more alike than we are different. When we accept those brief invitations we will deeply understand that truth. It will become unfavorable, bad to taste, this idea of hiding our hurts and bruises as we brush and bump into those who are just as badly bruised as we are. We will see that that hurts us even more.
When we see just how much we have in common, sharing our bruises means we will share in our healing. We will refuse to contribute any more to hurt and begin to celebrate Hope.
I am sure of this, it will take many hesitations before she speaks, but what a beautiful thing it will be when she begins. I will be there when she uncovers her messes and blunders to find that her worth is not found there. When she releases the shameful things that dig into her soul and they slowly begin to lose their bite. When the burdens that she carries find help on the willing shoulders of her trusted community... she will know that she is loved from head to toe.
I need to keep this moment present in my mind always... I am her and she is me. This is empathy's beginning point. This is where love lives in the warm bellowing roar of acceptance.
The beginning of a community aware.