Begetting Vulnerability

No One Chose You

The lie found me on the second night: no one would ever choose you.

It began with God putting his finger on a wound of an unfulfilled promise — the same wound the enemy had already been snaking his way into with a web of lies. Where my experiential history reinforced the false narrative the enemy was weaving.

The Lord is kind in the way He uses people to inwardly agitate to expose the bleeding of a pre-existing wound. On this night my agitation and wound was from an unfulfilled promise.

I desperately tried to disentangle myself from the lie, but I failed.

It would be easy if it were simply the one lie we had to fight against, but the enemy doesn’t fight fair. He will exploit every weakness, every chink in the armor that has not been renewed and fortified. He will weave a thousand lies into a tapestry to cover up the root of the issue.

The Wrestle with Language

On the second night of the Crest of the Wave, I sat in a crucifying tension of inadequacy. We, the team, had the honor to lay hands on and minister to the people. What I thought would be easy began to crush me. How do you minister to someone without words? How do you minister to someone who does not understand the words you are saying? I was wrestling with the language barrier.

God later revealed the issue I was having. He was unveiling my eyes to see that He is the source. Holy Spirit moves outside of logical understanding at times even outside of confines of language. I had become familiar, letting words fill the role that solely belongs to Holy Spirit. I relied on what I could say (Even the words He gives me) rather than trust what Holy Spirit will do… the things I could not see. You don’t have to understand something to receive what Holy Spirit gives you. After all, Holy Spirit does more than I could say in a lifetime.

The Empty Seat

When I left the conference, I was drowning in inadequacy, and the lies from the unfulfilled promise. It was a wrestle that left me vulnerable and the enemy did not hesitate to exploit. I thought at least when I got on the bus… someone would sit next to me, and their companionship would bring me out of my spiraling.

Except I was wrong. No one chose to sit next to me.

When everyone was on the bus and my seat sat empty, the enemy drove a stake straight through my heart. Here was another experience that seemed to reinforce the father of lies, attempting to convince me “No one chooses you.”

And no one saw.

Hot tears streamed down my face and no one saw. No one checked on me, no one said hello. Every person was engrossed in their own conversations, and here I was again, alone. So I succumbed to the pit and disappeared. The lie, “I’m always alone,”  hammered the stake in my heart deeper. I felt a hand on my head as I lay down, but I was too far gone in my pain to allow anyone beyond the walls I had erected.

These kinds of pits have connecting tunnels to other spiraling pits. Because now it wasn’t just the wound of an unfulfilled promise and inadequacy, but the enemy was weaving together a false narrative. It began with “no one chooses you”, and now has become “no one sees you.” I could hear the whisper of the enemy, “Your mom saw you,” which began a descent into the forever ache of missing my mom.

Choosing the Cave

You either let Holy Spirit search your heart, or let the enemy take ground in you. It wasn’t that I felt unloved. See the last six years have woven a story of how the Lord sets the lonely in family. He took a broken-down orphan and wrapped her in true identity. Every time a lie would unravel truth, He was faithful to wrap me again, and again, and again. In identity as a son/daughter, I learned I had a place at the table. When I finally learned to love myself I could receive the love of others not because I had performed my way into being loved.

The maturity of last season interrupted the enemy’s attempt to sever me from identity and family; however, my response wasn’t a mature son’s response. For in my weakness I reverted to orphan mentality. This brokenness was so deep that I chose to run to a cave. By hiding, I made a choice to exile myself from the family that the Lord made available.

Why do we do that? The very thing that the Lord establishes to release the remedy to our brokenness is the first thing we cut off?

There’s a fine line between processing with Jesus and running to a cave. Jesus is the remedy; however, the family is the conduit to healing that remains.

I was convinced no one could remedy this except God so I ran to a cave I called my secret place. The secret place was in fact my secret place, but my heart’s motive caused it to become a cave. I knew I was hiding and I didn’t care. The pain had already erected walls of self preservation, allowing my body to “numb” and “check out”.

The Ladder Out

Still, even in my dark night of the soul, my heart is His. Even in my failure, my heart always returns to Him. I reached out to one of my intercessors and exposed my actions. Her encouragement didn’t bring me out of my pit but her intercessions were pulling me back to Him.

From the corner of my room, I heard a conversation that began to break me free from my own anguish. A sweet sister, unprompted, poured out her own pain. As the sound of a heart breaking filled my ears my love for her created a ladder in the middle of my pit.

The quickest way out of a pit is to lift someone else out of theirs. I slowly climbed out of my self and back into community, albeit just with two people, but at least it was a start. She had been convinced she was the only one breaking down, and I responded with a laugh. She was weeping, and I began laughing at the absurdity of the enemy. What she didn’t know is that I spent the last two hours trapped in my own pit, drowning in my own heartbreak.

A simple confession can expose the enemy and be enough to jolt someone out of their pit. Hers jolted me out of mine. I still wasn’t okay, but was able to do the next best thing: sleep. Just like with Elijah, good sleep and nourishment will pull you out of your “I want to die” mentality.

The Table

After brekky came the most painful and breathtaking encounter. A moment I’ll never forget.

We gathered in the dining hall, debriefing from the previous nights of the conference. Tension gripped me as my experience was in opposition to the testimonies my friends were giving. The ongoing wrestle of the laying on of hands and the language barrier continued to crucify me. I needed to expose my heart’s struggle, hoping my mature sisters and brothers could speak into my inadequacy. That somehow without divulging what I really was struggling with they could help pull me out from this lingering heaviness. Makes no sense at all.

I wanted to speak up, but fought an inner war for twenty minutes to make my voice heard. Every time I would start to speak out, another voice rang out and I would shrink back. In this small hesitation, the Lord revealed a root cause of within my childhood of learning not to speak up.

In hindsight, I see the perfection of His timing and orchestration. I clearly see the perfect revelation lived out in how vulnerability begets vulnerability. The same sister whose heart’s anguish kept me from nosediving deeper into my own pit shared with the team her story. How the Lord pulled her out of rejection’s lies and back in to correct alignment in her identity. She willingly shared her vulnerability (which I knew the depths it reached) and it gripped me with courage to confess and reveal mine. She had to testify before me so that when His ask came, my heart was yielded to Him.

The little thing that I wanted to share suddenly morphed into something I didn’t want to do. The still small voice didn’t have to say a word, because the moment I opened my mouth, I knew His ask. He wanted me to confess my dark night of the soul in front of the entire team. Thirty-something people.

Within the seconds of hesitation, I leaned into His grace and silently asked, “Are You sure?”

He didn’t change His mind.

I’m discovering there’s something so powerful when you come to your God-appointed friends at a table of trust and place your pain onto the table. (Normally not with thirty-something people)

Being vulnerable leaves you naked and exposed, and people will see you. I've learned that with exposure, there's a depth of healing you wouldn’t otherwise receive. But it’s risky.

The Confession

In pure surrender, I yielded. My sister’s vulnerability begat my own. In obedience, I awkwardly stumbled through words that didn’t make sense to me. I began to pour out the events that caused me to end up in a dark night of the soul. The most painful part was that no one saw, no one chose me. As I spoke and reached the pinnacle of my pain, the temptation to “check out” collided with me. Numbing was an old coping mechanism, inviting me into false comfort. One that God longs to dismantle to become our only comfort. He longs for His children to be whole and healed.

I don’t know if it was pure self-will or the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, but I had had enough. I slammed my fist against the table and out from my mouth came a holy defiance:

“I will not check out. I refuse to check out!”

I submitted my soul to my spirit and continued my story.

I’ll never forget the moment the last of my confession filled the air.

The atmosphere shifted.

Everyone felt it.

I felt it.

What Vulnerability Opened

As I laid my pain upon the table for all eyes to see, a holy hush of God’s presence filled the room. He came in and healed depths of me I didn’t know were broken. My vulnerability became an open invitation for everyone else in the room to let down their walls and let God in.

It was indescribable except — it was holy

I found myself sitting at a table, fully seen. Not because of the right words, because I decided to let myself be seen.

What I thought was a going to be confession about my own pain became an invitation for an entire room to encounter the healing presence of God.

The beautiful mystery of vulnerability is this: vulnerability begets vulnerability.

It’s exponential.

Where one person’s courage gives another permission to take off their armor. One person’s confession gives another language to their own pain. One person’s willingness to be seen invites another to the same table — the Father’s table.

The enemy wanted my pain to become a cave. God turned it into a table where others could feast on His goodness. He took my dark night of the soul and made it a catalyst to unlock healing for an entire room.

I was sitting at the table, steeping in the holiness of the moment as my friend leaned over and whispered, “You just changed the whole room.”