When Your Safe Place Is Not Safe

Can I share something with ya’ll?  I mean, even if you just said no, I cannot hear you.  I have played it safe most of my life.  I am not big on pushing myself outside of my comfort zone.  Pushing publish on my first blog post was THE MOST uncomfortable feeling ever.  When I survived the first day after posting, I was relieved.  I had made it through that.

Being pushed makes me grumpy.  I get aggravated because I feel out of control and helpless.  I feel vulnerable, and I do not like that feeling.  If I am vulnerable that means that I have exposed the soft parts of myself.  If I am vulnerable that means that I am risking hurt.  Yuck.  I exist in a world where I try to protect myself from hurt at all costs.

In my attempt to protect myself, I have constructed some massive walls.  Now listen, boundaries are healthy.  They exist to protect us from damage.  But I have walls.  Without a gate that I can open and close.  Nope.  To get all the way in, you have to be willing to climb.  When you get to the top of that wall, there are spikes.  Once you squeeze through those, you have to scale back down to safety.  You will find me on the ground with open arms.  You have proved yourself worthy of deep connection and relationship.

But the past year has found me shifting.  The good Lord has been doing some reconstructing on the walls that I carefully erected in my life.  He has taken a sledgehammer and knocked holes in my precious walls.   Those holes have shone light on issues deep inside of me that needed to be exposed.  Writing has let people peer through those holes into long protected areas.  But it has also given me the opportunity to peer out to see the people that I would have previously denied access.

He is continually pushing me beyond what feels safe.  He is continually asking me to go beyond.  To do the things that terrify me.  He didn’t patch up the holes in the walls to allow me to go back to my preferred level of vulnerability.  He installed a door in the place of the holes.  Now I can peer out of the window and decide if I want to let someone in.  I can yell, “Who is it?” and wait for the response safely on my side of the door.  I guess instead of climbing folks can yell until they are hoarse.  But that’s improvement.

Although I operate in my lane of safety, I am finding that it is not actually that safe.  It is hurting me.  It is holding me back from being all that God called me to be.  My prayer is that I am able to withstand the push and pull from God.  I want to be able to do what He says even when I am petrified.  The reality is that no matter how crazy it may feel the safest place for me to be is in the will of God.  #wepreach