Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

by Donald Miller

SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME WE WILL NEVER FEEL loved until we drop the act, until we’re willing to show our true selves to the people around us.

I’m the kind of person who wants to present my most honest, authentic self to the world—so I hide backstage and rehearse honest and authentic lines until the curtain opens.

I’d learned my default mode was to perform. Even in small groups I feel like I have to be “on.” But when I’m alone my energy comes back. When I’m alone I don’t have to perform for anybody.

the reward is integrity, and by that I mean a soul fully integrated, no difference between his act and his actual person.

Control is about fear. Intimacy is about risk.

a safe person is. They say it’s somebody who speaks the truth in grace.

if we go to our graves with our feelings still in us, we will die with regrets.

I am willing to sound dumb. I am willing to be wrong. I am willing to be passionate about something that isn’t perceived as cool. I am willing to express a theory. I am willing to admit I’m afraid. I’m willing to contradict something I’ve said before. I’m willing to have a knee-jerk reaction, even a wrong one. I’m willing to apologize. I’m perfectly willing to be perfectly human.

each of us is unique and if we didn’t exist something in the world would have been lost.

“How much do you know about your family?” scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness.

1. Have a project to work on, some reason to get out of bed in the morning and preferably something that serves other people. 2. Have a redemptive perspective on life’s challenges. That is, when something difficult happens, recognize the ways that difficulty also serves you. 3. Share your life with a person or people who love you unconditionally.

Does this person have the kind of character and discipline it takes to make a loving relationship work? Is the passion real or are they trying to heal old wounds?

What differentiates true Christianity from the pulp many people buy into is that Jesus never offers that completion here on earth. He only asks us to trust him and follow him to the metaphorical wedding we will experience in heaven.