Vulnerability !?!?

Yesterday in church, the message included a question. (OK, it always does but this one I want to write about) Well, lemme go back a bit. We are in the Lenten season, forty days before Easter. (Just removed my description of what it means, Google is your friend here) Tod will be teaching on/about discipleship among other things. You can listen to or read it here:

http://www.scpres.org/app/w_page.php?id=25&type=section ( I don’t know how to make a link, cut-n-paste folks)

Anyway – the thing that got me was this question, “With whom do you confess you sins, share your burdens, ask for prayer, discuss your doubts? With whom can you open your life in safe vulnerability?” Hmm. Well, no one. I could not, cannot think of any one person I can do this with on any / all topics. Sure, there are few folks that get an ear full on this or that or a ‘bit’ of both but, no one person that I can tell anything too and feel safe doing so.

Yet – and this is big yet – I sit here on occasion and spill out whatever it is that is eating me alive, tell YOU everything I am feeling and thinking. My fear, my doubt, my silly plans and dreams, my failing and my accomplishments. My sins and my victories, whatever happens to be happening in my life and in my noodle needing to be spilled out to make room for more. With YOU I am vulnerable.

Did you know I can see how many people read this page each day, week, month? Recently my numbers went from 1.6 / 1.7 a day to over 30 per day. There are still more posts than comments but I know you are out there. I do not know who you are though. Some I guess at, some would shock me. The numbers themselves make me scratch my head.

So – I’ve made a deal with myself to be myself, to not be affected/effected by who I assume is reading. Just to keep this as it is. My space to purge, vomit out the noise in the noggin in search of peace, no matter how fleeting. Like bailing a sinking boat, what I toss out is quickly replaced. Some new water, some of the old water gets back in too. Still, I try.

Then I hear a question like that one up there near the top of page – and I am stopped, made to think, made to wonder, made to shake my head in near disbelief. How fucked-up is it that people I say I trust, people I say I need, people I say I love, people that I call my FRIENDS find out about me but reading this, along with 26 or 28 people I do not even know?

I desperately want to, feel the need to apologize, for SOMETHING to SOMEONE! But, to whom, me or you? Why? I do not know the more important question of the two that will not rest – 1) How/Why did this happen? 2) Who did it happen too, me or to you?

Hmm. Wow. (and for good measure) Go figure.

Peace –

Ant-Knee