The Beauty in Openness

My inner (non-family) circle consists of 3 amazing girls, without whom I seriously would not survive. Unfortunately, one of them lives several states away right now, so we aren't as connected as we would like to be. (Love and miss you!!)

We actually sat on this bench right here.

Last night, the three of us who still live in the same town got together and just shared our hearts; being open and honest about things going on in our friendship, things that we've kept bottled up for various reasons, things that needed to spoken, but that we had been avoiding like it was our job.  And while not everything shared was easy to hear or easy to speak, it was a beautiful time in our friendship, and all three of us walked away feeling refreshed, renewed, and like a heavy load had been lifted off of our trio.


Now I'm not sharing this to puff myself up. I am a bottler by nature, and in fact one thing I shared I had kept bottled up for the past 6 months. Other things shared were a little more recent, but all were necessary and important to be spoken and released.

This conversation prompted this blog post for one reason: I was reminded last night that being open with the people who truly love and care about you is a beautiful thing.  As I said, I am a bottler. I am independent to a fault. I hate admitting that I need people, and I hate having to lean on others for things. The very thought of letting someone know that they hurt me (aka that I'm not as tough as I pretend to be) makes me cringe.  But our conversation last night reminded me that we are meant to live this life in community. We are meant to be open and honest with those who treasure our hearts, and to bring beauty to each others' lives through that openness.

After our conversation, we spent the next two hours grocery shopping for our weekend away with our larger circle of friends. Nothing exciting or spectacular, yet you could feel the sense of peace and renewed energy in our little trio.  I am so thankful that these girls pushed us to be open with one another and share our hearts.

I feel like I'm rambling a bit today.  Maybe that's because I'm watching the clock waiting for vacation weekend to officially start. Maybe that's because I run on caffeine. Maybe it's some of both.

Regardless, my point is this.  Openness is beautiful. Being able to share your thoughts and feelings, your hurts and joys, is a beautiful and necessary part of our humanity.  Now, I think we definitely need to be careful about whom we are sharing those inner parts of our heart with.  But when you have people that you know without a doubt have your best interest in mind and are helping to guard your heart, openness and vulnerability are so beautiful.



Even when you're a mess.

Even when you know you're being dumb, but it's the way you feel, anyway.

Even when you don't know exactly what to say so you just word vomit for a while.

Even when you feel like you're the broken friend in your group and everyone else has there crap so much more together than you.

And that openness is so difficult.  We build up walls to protect ourselves. We bottle up our feelings and hurts and emotions and make ourselves our most likable versions to present to others. We pretend that we are made of armor and that we don't get hurt or have emotions. (Please tell me I'm not the only one that does that...) But living like that is exhausting. Always being in defense mode. Always feeling like you are on your own.

Life is not meant to be lived like that. We are meant to live in community. The very God who created us imago dei has community within his personhood of the Trinity.  We are not meant to be alone.

And an integral part of not being alone is being open with those who hold your heart.

There is beauty is openness. Embrace it.

-A.A.