Great Wall of Nina.

I haven’t posted in awhile, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking myself into craziness. August was marked as my month to relax and although I did take a week off from work to spend in exotic Lubbock, Texas, I think that’s what spurred the latest bouts of thoughts. It’s amazing how much your mind has to say when you’re not concentrating on work or school and the like.

I’ve got too much to say and it’s bedtime, but I thought it was important to say that these past weeks have been weeks of tremendous growth. Now, here’s where I admit that in these past weeks I also feel like I had a few tremendous falls, but it’s okay. Valleys are just as important as mountains.

So what have I been learning? I’ve always harped on my friends for not being honest, hiding their sins, never willing to really just sit down and open up. Welp. I’m a black pot and my friends are black kettles. I let my guard down a little, a few bricks off my Great Wall if you will, and opened up a big jar of ugly recently. Things I thought I had successfully swept under the rug came out and surprised me and a few of the people who have happened to talk to me these past weeks. I realized that just because I am not dealing with certain issues in my life doesn’t mean those issues aren’t still waiting to rear their ugly heads at me when the time’s just right.

And that’s just the problem. Not only are we black pots and kettles, but we’re great at sweeping things under the rug. I believe that people were created to be in community with each other. You can’t argue with that because hey, obviously there is a reason there is more than one human alive, right? But can community truly exist if we’re keeping to ourselves? Since when did we get so scared of letting others get to know us, to love us?

Pastor Matt Chandler recently said something along the lines of people not needing professional counselors and therapists if we could all just learn how to communicate with each other. Someone said to me, “Duh, that’s why I’m going. I suck at communicating.” Somewhere on everyone’s timeline, we have learned to be scared of communicating. We have learned to fear not being accepted.

I have never, ever met a person (or heard of one) who has opened up a big dirty jar of ugly and had everyone leave them to die on an island alone. So why are we so insanely scared?

In my recent steps to opening up, I have been met with different responses. Most have been caught off guard by the fact that I can actually be the talker and not the listener for once. It’s scary, saying something and grimacing at the thought of awkward silence, ridicule, or total rejection. You’d be surprised though. You’ve be surprised that people just want to open up too. It’s too early to say, but I hope it’s like a domino effect. Like a domino effect and like a fine wine. Just keeps going and gets better as time goes on.

I think it’s only when we do the heavy duty housekeeping when we start to realize how broken we are. I know it’s that way for me. If someone looks like they’ve got it together, they are either great at manipulating others and their own selves into thinking they’ve got it good or they have come to grips that they are broken and in need of constant grace. And until we finally admit to each other that we’re messed up, that we have no answers, community will always be out of reach, friendships will be stagnate, and we will continue being unsatisfied with what we’ve been given.

Why hold back? Why be scared? You want to be loved, so lay it all out there so you can really be loved, every ugly beautiful inch of you.