My Journey to Truly Being Loved and Being Vulnerable

Freshman year of high school I was so excited to have a fresh start that I did EVERYTHING. Not 1, 2, or even 3, but 4 sports. Choir. Grades. Clubs. 20 minute “natural makeup” tutorials on Youtube in the morning. I met new, exciting people, leaped to join groups I could go to football games and dances with, and found that some people even liked the me that I was putting into the world. Honestly, I had a lot of fun. But eventually… it all broke down. 

The last week of school, my dad casually asked me if he should sign me up for soccer again, and, out of nowhere, I started crying. Like, REALLY crying. It took me a while to realize what was the source of my tears: I. Was. Exhausted. I was tired of trying to be everything to everyone and of trying to do everything.

It was then that my dad said something that would rock my world. 

“Alex…” he said, “You don’t have to do ANYTHING to earn love. Not mine, not mom’s, not God’s, not anyone’s.”

Oof. It finally made sense why I was so tired.

Everyday I was trying to prove myself. I was trying to prove that I was worthy of love. Everyday, I was going through the motions without reflecting on what was fueling them: My search to be admired, to be loved, and to belong. Chances are you are on a similar search.

The desire for love is at the core of our hearts as human beings. This is because love and communion with others is literally what we are created for. This desire is good, true, and beautiful. It is what leads us to form deep connections and live meaningful lives. It is GOOD to embrace this deep desire for love. But embrace it with this knowledge: 

You don’t have to go and do anything to be worthy of love. You are loved and beloved just as you are. You are good. You are important. You are invaluable, special, and irreplaceable in the midst of any of your weaknesses or worries. 

It was only after realizing that truth that I could finally live towards the love that I so desired! Ironically, my constant search to earn love was actually keeping me from being myself… from being truly known. And if people don’t truly know us, even in our most broken places, how can they fully love us there? It made sense why, while my connections with others were fun, they felt so surface level and I had such an ache for more. While people could like me, they couldn’t fully love me if I was not allowing them to see who I really was. I was settling for admiration rather than taking the risk to be vulnerable. 

Now vulnerability can be scary. The other day I asked a group of high school girls what kept them from being vulnerable with their friends and their answers pierced my heart. They told me that it is less painful to have a facade rejected than one’s deepest self. They said they didn’t want to seem weak or out of control, and that they didn’t want to taint their friends’ images of them. There was a pair of best friends there that looked at each other stunned and said, “You feel that way too?” They both thought they were the only one with insecurities, weaknesses, and fears, and that the other one had it all together. One of the girls smiled. “Let’s go there,” she said. I can only imagine how much more fulfilling and authentically loving their friendship must be now.

To be vulnerable means more than just being open and transparent… it means letting another person INTO our lives. After realizing this my freshman year of high school, I took more risks to be myself and formed deeper friendships that changed the course of my life. However, my journey towards authentic love and vulnerability has not stopped, and I don’t think it ever will. Just this last month, some painful emotions came up in my heart when I was with a teammate of mine. Immediately, I felt an instinct to go hide away in my room, cry by myself, and then maybe let my teammate in on how I felt later, once I had internally worked out the issue and could present my feelings to her in a controlled way. 

But instead, I remembered that to experience the love that I so desired, a love I was worthy of receiving, I had to let people in. I took the risk to let my teammate see my tears and the messiness of a heart that hadn’t worked out what she was feeling yet. She didn’t run away. She sat with me in my messiness and loved me. From that moment on, our friendship has blossomed deeper than it ever has. We have a new confidence and trust in our love for one another. 

Today, I want to invite you to be vulnerable with those you love. Maybe it will take just a little more time to build up trust in some of those relationships before you go to certain places, and that is okay! But know that you are worthy of being loved as you are, even if you have felt the pain of being rejected in those places in the past. A life of authenticity will always be more fulfilling. To live a virtuous and courageous life does not look like being a superhero whose life and heart is never messy! It looks like being fully human and inviting God’s grace and the love of others into that journey.

Finally, no matter how your journey proceeds, know that you are already INFINITELY loved by someone who knows you even better than you know yourself. The God of the universe knows your good, bad, and ugly. He knows your day-to-day struggles and pain, and yet He declares you so good and worthy of love that He would lovingly lay down his life just for you. His love is a love available to you now and forever. His friendship is one you can always come back to and remain. To learn vulnerability, let’s start by practicing being vulnerable with HIM.

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” -C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves