ambivalence in intimacy.

“We all are born into the world looking for someone looking for us, and that we remain in this mode of searching for the rest of our lives.” — Curt Thompson

We don’t want to be known. Well, we do, but we don’t...but we do...

For some of us wanting to be known means, we want people to see the good in us. We want people to see us without flaws, we want our passion for helping people to be celebrated. We want to be loved for our success and prized for our beauty. We want our minds to be recognized, our loyalty to be admired. We want our fun-loving adventurous selves to be sought after, our strength to be praised. We want our presence to be wanted.

But being known always means exposure. It means to uncover that the goodness in us is not without a shadowed companion. That we indeed are flawed, bearing contempt, pride, vanity, envy, self-preservation, revenge, among other things.

Being known, means putting your needs at risk, leaving you vulnerable to emptiness and powerlessness. It’s a compelling enough threat to keep us hidden. Ironically, to keep us from our needs.

Others of us want to stay hidden because we have been convinced that it is our goodness that invited harm and left us defenseless and alone.

Jesus puzzles me when I think of myself in this place, with my glory and shame exposed and uncovered. He doesn’t leave me nor does he exploit me. He doesn’t join the crowd of accusers nor partake with thieves. He stays with me in this process of exposure, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, and enduring all things that he might rescue me. What a mystery is he is.