Lean On Me: Finding Intentional, Vulnerable, and Consistent Community

by Anne Marie Miller

community-challenged people

If you’re the kid sitting alone at the lunch table, go sit with a group.

Tried that. They'd all move to the table I just left.

We’re surrounded by people everywhere we go—both physically and virtually—yet the need to feel that we belong somewhere is undeniably palpable.

Not always the case. Sometimes that protective screen allows us to connect with others who "don't know me well enough" to see why those who *do* know me reject me.

wanting

Being afraid, you mean.

If you choose this now or have made this decision to follow Christ in the past, it doesn’t matter how many times you concede to your old faults and habits; God is always waiting for you to answer his question, “Where are you?” with, “I’m right here. Broken. Please, forgive me, Father.”

Maybe you were committed and vulnerable but something happened, a sudden blindsiding jolt or a slow decomposition, and you were left rejected and hurt.

They didn’t want to let their fears or pain bully them out of doing what they believed to be right.

As believers, it’s always our job to love people; it’s also important to know how to best love them.

settings that encourage people to let their guard down and confide in each other.

There was no accountability or consistency in those relationships.

How does "accountability" benefit in something like this? Here's what Anne had to say on it: In regards to 'accountability" instead of criticism, I think of it as as authentically being vulnerable in relationships and open to growth instead of criticism. While sometimes criticism is needed (Galatians 6) there should be more life coming out of the relationships than pain...if there is more pain, maybe a a relationship with a different person is in order.

this persona of “Anne Jackson” you’ve become,

the pain would be pushed so far down I wouldn’t feel it anymore.

the amount of work and pain I would face would be intolerable—maybe even emotionally fatal—if I ended up abandoned. Again.

Have the words “I can do this on my own” taken root into your soul?

No, but the words "I *must* do this on my own" have. "I must do this on my own because I'm not getting any help from anywhere else."

I know now that a friend isn’t someone who lets us be ourselves. No! A friend is someone who will die to keep us from becoming anyone else, someone who fights for us against a world that is constantly trying to shrink us into shelved canisters labeled “how you’re supposed to be.” A friend does everything possible to make sure we become who we are made to be—nothing less, nothing more.

Then I'm not sure I've ever had a friend.

I found myself feeling like I was in an out-of-control tsunami, grasping for anything that would help me survive.

I wanted to sleep forever, dreading the sunrise that would remind me of the uncertainties that were reentering my life.

I thought God told me to write.

“Do you want relief? Or do you want to be healed?”

Michael, Gail’s husband, is an executive, and a creative one at that.

Michael & Gail Hyatt

Circumstances in our lives push us to clasp our hands tightly around the people or places or things we love, those things we’d be devastated if we lost.

To the point, sometimes, that we strangle whatever relationship we had with them.

There have been times in my life when, in desperation, I would shout in my spirit to God, asking him to take away my fear of losing control.

I had, at one time or another, surrendered my fear of losing control to him, but I had never committed it to him.

“You see, Anne, you’re doing your job. You’re right. There isn’t anything magical or special about this lake. But we’re symbolically releasing this to God today. You’re doing your job in this and trusting God to take it. You’re committing it to him. And in faith, because you can’t see it for yourself yet, you believe him to take it. Because he wants you to have a sound mind. He promises you that.”

With the ashes of my list now mixed into soil and water, I could not retrieve them. They were committed to the lake.

though I may still be reminded of them and tempted to take them back, I can’t.

We are not in control.

Nor can we ever be, no matter what we're "supposed to do."

My prayers were not answered in the way I wanted, and I never understood why.

I began to resent the differences.

That's what gets me about Lifetime & Hallmark movies!

That was my prayer! Why did you give it to her? Why not me?

I equated mercy with relief.

Over a year had passed since I’d sensed the nearness of God.

I was numb to it,

my ordination

I pushed my list of demands on him. I didn’t want him; I wanted relief.

God’s withholding of an emotional reprieve was the most profound mercy I could have ever asked for. Mercy brings both comfort and pain. Sometimes it is soft and peaceful and swaddles us. Sometimes it surrounds us with silence, leaving us feeling forgotten and rejected. This mercy is the most difficult to accept, but I’ve learned it’s also the most imperative to transformation.

But how?

I was being vulnerable with the One who already knows each and every hair on my head.

Vulnerability with others is terrifying. We liken being vulnerable with being honest. Honesty is a part of vulnerability, yes, but it is the safer element. Vulnerability has much less comfortable meanings: wounding, to wound, pluck, to tear, capable of being seized, defenseless.

They must earn our trust and show us they will not take our wounds and cause them to bleed more.

We are never safe from pain, and safety has nothing to do with vulnerability.

I would go from having indestructible cheer to feeling so, so stupid and so, so hopeless.

I did everything right. I lost God and I found him, and I made mistakes and I learned from them. I closed down and opened up to others, and yet this cycle continued in spite of the moments of growth and the moments of backtracking.

“The slow and inefficient work of God.

He illustrated it with waves of the ocean, moment by moment moving in from the vast sea to land. In one wave, this motion does nothing. But slowly and inefficiently, whatever is in the ocean’s way becomes worn smooth.

I want God to change my heart. Now.

Take it away, God. Now? He gently says no as a single wave of his grace washes over. And then another.

I could persevere.

Don Draper,

"Mad Men" character

Hope ran over me like a semitruck.

Still waiting for mine.

stuckness