Sometimes it feels that my heart is to heavy write, to pray, to do anything except avoid everything that is reality and slip into the comfort of the things that allow me to ignore what is in front of me. 

When I get overwhelmed by too many tasks to complete or an increasing amount of hard stuff or heaping piles of emotion, I find solace in a TV show or a good fantasy book or some dumb game on my phone if only to be able to allow my brain rest from the constant clamoring from one thought to another. 

Facing the realities of life is hard and unpleasant. It causes us to truly take a look at ourselves and the part we play in the current state of our lives, city, relationships, country or world. We can spend time attempting to fill our lives and our minds with non-reality, but inevitably the thoughts of our present situation always find a way back into our minds causing gut-churning, sickness, or heavy chested anxiety. 

Why is it so hard to come to terms with what is real? Why do we run in the opposite direction of honesty and vulnerability? Is it pride? Fear? 

When we get hurt and our trust is broken, our ability to be vulnerable lessens, not just with the person who hurt us, but with the rest of the people we allow into the inner circles of our lives. 

“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. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” – C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

It is tempting and seemingly beneficial to simply close ourselves off from putting our hearts on the line and sharing them with someone else. But ultimately our hearts become more and more hardened and incapable of giving or receiving love. 

Jesus is our ultimate example of vulnerability. Fully God, he came to our earth in the most vulnerable of forms, a baby. He constantly put himself in situations where he would be an outsider with an unpopular viewpoint or an unaccepted solution to the present problem. It was hard. It was hard for him to the point of sweating blood, of a friends betrayal, of physical torture, of mental, emotional, and spiritual humiliation, and ultimately to the point of death. 

But each step toward honestly opening your heart to face reality and to love and be loved creates more and more of a capacity for love. When we invite God and others into the pieces of our lives that aren’t shiny or don’t fit the status quo, we find a life more fulfilling, beautiful world. Yes, there will be heartache and hurt and loss, this is inevitably part of human relationships. But what we gain is life-giving and eternal. 

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” – 2 Corinthians 12:9-10