Vulnerability is Key
by: Shayla Alexander
It’s hard not to guard your heart when it was so strongly broken. My heart thrives on relationships, and I covet ones that run deeply. Where that is my greatest strength, that is also my greatest weakness. There are times I feel like I care too much and love too deeply, so much so that it makes getting my heart broken very easy. It’s as if my heart is a tree and my relationships are roots. As my roots grow, they branch out further and wider until one simple thing can cause them to recede or break. The worst part when they do uproot is that those roots never grow back the same, if at all. My point is to say that when someone you does anything that deviates from those roots that have been created, you’re never the same again. However, that’s also where you are given the opportunity to grow. That’s what I didn’t know.
I’m sharing my heart about the West Coast Delight Retreat at almost midnight in hopes of helping you understanding this reality. No matter how deep your roots run, they will always have the chance of breaking. There’s an upside, though, and that’s the opportunity to learn from your past and grow. My story begins with apprehension and continues with repetition. I was a shy, little thing in middle school who made friends that stabbed me in the back, and I became apprehensive of trusting anyone. Two years ago I was abused by a friend (yes, a friend!), and we had some deep, tangled roots that she slowly began to thrust out of the ground with lies, blame, and apathy, but she made me feel needed. I planted those roots back in the dirt several times over because she needed stability, even if it was at my expense. I learned the hard way that roots need to grow back – they can’t be buried again the same way they were. Spending so much energy trying to keep things how they are starts to mess with you and it makes you insane (defined as: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results). I was, and still am, a mess.
Before the retreat, I had just gotten back into a relationship with Christ after quite the lull. I was working on building myself back up, trimming roots and shoving them back into the ground as deep as I could get them. Because the deeper they are, the harder they are to uproot and damage, right? No, but that was my logic as I began this slow process again. Going to the retreat halted this process and reversed it. I was being called to uproot my own heart. It hurt and I wondered why this had to happen. But by the third night of the retreat, it felt good. It felt different. My heart came completely undone as I confessed to people I hardly knew that I was comfortable in my anxiety. I was comfortable being repetitive and trying to cover up my roots each time they resurfaced. When I confessed these things that I had buried for months – years – I began to worry. I worried how I would get these roots back in the ground when my whole heart had been turned upside down. That’s when I discovered why God had sent me half way across the country for five days and four nights with 36 people who I had never met in my life.
I thought I had it all figured out. I thought I could handle life all on my own, but God showed me differently. He showed me that we are not called to do this by ourselves, but with Him and with others. Vulnerability is key to deep relationships because it allows others to fight with, and for, you as He commands in Matthew 18:20. And I realize that I am not a tree, but a branch. For in John 15, Christ is the vine and we are the branches. I do not stand alone, but with Christ who supports me and a Father who prunes my roots. By the end of the retreat, I chose to move away from relying on my abuse and being in control, and move towards trust and love. My heart is being reworked, and the Father set new roots within it with every relationship I formed at the retreat. I am free from insanity and doing things on my own. I am loved and encouraged by the faith of friends who fight for me. My journey is not finished, but merely growing in a new direction. The retreat was a time of community, fellowship, and freedom from being rooted to the ground. And that is more than I could have ever asked for.
