You Are Enough: A Discussion On Fear & Vulnerability In Relationship

At the very core of human emotion is the need for love and belonging – A need not only to be seen but to be truly known by another human being. We were created for intimacy. Yet, so much of our culture never truly experiences it, for a variety of reasons, but most often because of fear – whether it be fear of vulnerability, fear of rejection or simply fear of the unknown. What I have come to realize only recently through my own experience and through countless conversations with other single women who have struggled with this in a very real way is that all of these fears most often boil down to a fear of simply not being enough.

We all have our weaknesses, regrets, and imperfections. The very fact that we are human makes us imperfect. The true tragedy of human imperfection isn’t that it exists, but that too often we allow our knowledge of our own imperfections to keep us from ever opening up and allowing another person in so that we can experience true, vulnerable love.

A majority of you reading this most likely, at one point or another, have experienced heart break. Most of you know what it’s like to love someone deeply and to invest your heart completely into a relationship, only to have it taken away from you for one reason or another. It is painful. It is traumatic. And it is often hard to recover from. After an experience like that it would be easy to close your heart off from the the world and to assume that you are better off alone. But what we must realize is that we can’t close ourselves off from the experience of pain without simultaneously closing ourselves off from the experience of love. C.S. Lewis says it best when he says,  “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even 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. To love is to be vulnerable.”

This is such a beautiful reminder that real love cannot exist without vulnerability. When I look around at the marriages of people in my life that have stood the test of time, the consistent variable in all of them is courageous vulnerability. When I look at my parent’s marriage I see this exemplified beautifully. I see two people who have been through hell and back together. They have had some incredibly beautiful moments but also some incredibly painful moments. BUT through it all they have had both courage and deep trust. And that is exactly what real love is. To love someone is to trust them forever and that requires no small amount of courage.

C. JoyBell C says, “You only need one man to love you. But him to love you free like a wildfire, crazy like the moon, always like tomorrow, sudden like an inhale and overcoming like the tides. Only one man and all of this.” Undoubtedly all of us want to experience that type of love in this lifetime but the most beautiful thing about this quote to me is that there is a man who, in this moment, is already loving you like this and more. His name is Jesus. You can accept that as some cliche statement or you can take the truth of it to heart and allow it to transform you.

In order to be able to love another human being fully, freely, and selflessly, you have to first know that you are enough and that you are worthy of this type of fierce, passionate love. Not in spite of your imperfection but in light of your imperfection. Not because you have it all together, but because you are an imperfect human just like the rest of us. Not because you look like a beauty queen but because you are intrinsically worthy of love. One of my best friends once said  to me, “True beauty is allowing love to cover every imperfection.” That is such an incredible reminder that our key to discovering true beauty and true freedom from pain isn’t hiding our hearts away from all entanglements, but allowing Christ in to transform them. And even then, though He doesn’t promise us a pain free life, He does promise us His presence through whatever happens. He does promise to never leave us. He does promise to love us more fiercely in a moment than any earthly lover could love us in a lifetime. And He alone gives us the strength and the courage to trust, to be vulnerable and to, in the right time, open our hearts up to the right man. All He is calling us to do is have courage and to know that we absolutely are enough.