What Is Godly Vulnerability?

What is Godly Vulnerability?
It is strength and courage, the opposite of weakness.
Acting honestly invites deeper connections with others.

I listened to a book this week

in which a husband “outed” his wife’s lies about her Instagram life.

He hacked her social media and told the world she wasn’t who she said she was.

The book explored the ways we try to show the world our perfect life

to the extent that it’s not an honest portrait of ourselves.

In the book I read, the wife couldn’t forgive her husband, because she thought he could have found a kinder way to bring her back to her real self. Even though she came to realize that losing her job, fame, followers, and her “fake” identity was exactly what she needed to feel happy again. Her husband claimed he tried everything he knew to appeal to her before doing the drastic thing that he was almost sure would make her hate him. He said he did it for her sake.

What do you think?

Are there times when only “tough love” gets us back on track?

If we stray from honesty and integrity, do we deserve tough love?

Is that what’s happening when God brings us to our knees

with difficult circumstances and incredible hardships?

After all, on our knees and vulnerable is a good thing, right?

What is Godly Vulnerability?

Christians believe, that being vulnerable means you are honest with who you are, how you feel and acknowledging the parts of yourself that you would rather keep hidden. It’s not hiding behind an ‘Instagram life’, its about being real with God and people you meet.
www.churchofengland.org

The younger me sort of lived an Instagram life, even though the app had never been heard of then.

Now I can’t say with certainty whether I held myself to certain standards because I felt happier that way, or if it was fear of appearing less than to others. I think it was a mixture, because that life did have rewards.

It was difficult to share some parts of myself. I didn’t want to seem weak, lazy or lonely. So to make my life honest, I became the strong, hardworking, friendly and social person. I became supermom. I did all the cleaning and cooking, planning and playing, gardening and decorating required to be honest in who I wanted to be.

And then, it became too hard. Our life circumstances and Kim’s difficulties made it impossible to continue the way I was. I realized I didn’t have to be that person after all. Oh, I miss some of it. I would love to have more of some of those abilities again.

Because the friends I have today know me as a very different person than the friends I had twenty years ago. It took a few years to lose my supermom reputation. But as it went away, I became more vulnerable. I became willing to admit to myself I couldn’t do it all anymore.

So was I “real” back then? I thought I was. I genuinely enjoyed everything I did.

But “doing everything” didn’t make me a better person. I had no more worth in God’s eyes.

I wasn’t actually hiding anything from anyone. Even though I didn’t expose my insecurities on purpose, people who knew me saw me as I was. And loved me in spite of everything. Then and now.

So what I’m trying to say here is…

vulnerability is good.

It’s a sign of courage. We become braver and more resilient when we acknowledge who we really are and what our true feelings are. Our relationships with others grow stronger, and we actually form deeper connections.

For a Christian, it seems vulnerability looks a lot like humility and honesty.

It is freeing and satisfying.