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

by Donald Miller

How can we be loved if we are always in hiding?

He said the fear of letting people down is one of the primary reasons people procrastinate.

It’s like Bronnie Ware was saying, if we go to our graves with our feelings still in us, we will die with regrets.

So I wrote. I wrote as though God thought my voice mattered. I wrote because I believed a human story was beautiful, no matter how small the human was. I wrote because I didn’t make myself, God did. And I wrote like he’d invited me to share my true “self” with the world.

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.

The whole experience makes me wonder if the time we spend trying to become somebody people will love isn’t wasted because the most powerful, most attractive person we can be is who we already are, an ever-changing being that is becoming and will never arrive, but has opinions about what is seen along the journey.

William Blake said about Jesus that he was “all virtue and acted from impulse, not from rules.”

The more fully we live into ourselves, the more impact we will have. Acting may get us the applause we want, but taking a risk on being ourselves is the only path toward true intimacy. And true intimacy, the exchange of affection between two people who are not lying, is transforming.

I’M NOTICING A COMMON CHARACTERISTIC OF healthy families, though. The characteristic is this: kids with parents who are honest about their shortcomings seem to do better in life.

If you think about it, parents who are open and honest with their kids create an environment in which children are allowed to be human. And, sadly, parents who hide their flaws unknowingly create an environment where kids feel the need to hide.

Environments in which we are encouraged to hide our faults are toxic.

Then, Paul remembered a Bible verse from 1 John. He said that John, in summarizing all that he’d learned about God, said this: “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” “When you are with God,” Paul said, “there is no darkness, no hiding, no pretending. When you are with God, you have the freedom and courage to be yourself.”

“Oh,” Mark chuckled. “That wasn’t easy. But it was this single decision I made early on: I decided I wouldn’t judge my kids. No matter what they told me, I wouldn’t judge them. I might have to discipline them, but I wouldn’t make them feel like lesser people for their mistakes. And because of that, they learned to trust me with their deepest thoughts.”

I felt a sense of relief. If honesty is the key to intimacy, it means we don’t have to be perfect and, moreover, we don’t have to pretend to be perfect.

It’s true: if we live behind a mask we can impress but we can’t connect.

I suppose building a healthy family is possible. Maybe what children really need is simple. Maybe they just need somebody to show them it’s okay to be human.

For me, the sure sign a story is good is how it makes you feel afterward.

I say that because I’m starting to wonder if that’s not the whole point of life, to be thankful for it and to live in such a way others are thankful for theirs as well.

He had three recommendations: 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.

Codependency happens when too much of your sense of validation or security comes from somebody else.

But never, she said, ever try to change each other. Know who you are and know what you want in a relationship, and give people the freedom to be themselves.

Of course we will stand and make promises to each other at our wedding but even then, even with a spouse, I’ve come to believe a person’s love for you can’t grow unless you hold that person loosely.

Oddly, Hendrix argues, the more a partner exhibits the negative characteristics of our primary caretakers the more passion we will experience in the relationship.

When I met couples whose marriages were thriving after thirty and forty years, none of them were riding an emotional roller coaster of passion and then resentment. Instead, they loved each other as an act of their conscious will. They were more in control of their love than their “love” was in control of them.

In other words, I’m convinced every person has a longing that will never be fulfilled and it’s our job to let it live and breathe and suffer within it as a way of developing our character.

How many relationships have been ruined by two people attempting to squeeze the Jesus out of each other?

I would imagine there were some who wondered if Betsy and I didn’t think we could fulfill each other, why we’d get married in the first place. But for me, the answer to that question is simple: we both get somebody to share the longing with.

I don’t know if there’s a healthier way for two people to stay in love than to stop using each other to resolve their unfulfilled longings and, instead, start holding each other closely as they experience them.

My friend Al Andrews was right. Relationships are teleological. They’re all going somewhere and they’re turning us into something, hopefully something better, something new.

What else changes a person but the living of a story? And what is a story but the wanting for something difficult and the willingness to work for it?

I’d rather earn the money than win the lottery because there’s no joy in a reward unless it comes at the end of a story.

My faith teaches me that the path to join souls in love must of necessity involve a crucifixion, and I think there’s a metaphor in there for marriage.