iFail

As Americans we like to think of ourselves, see ourselves, and almost will ourselves as successful people at whatever we attempt. For me it has been everything from college courses to softball games and everything in between. I have been so blinded by my own pride that I even had the audacity at one point in my life to tell a mentor of mine that I "know a lot about relationships" (I'm red with embarrassment even as I recall it).

God has seen fit to reveal to me just how much (rather, how little) I know about relationships over the last few years. It has been a humbling...NO, it has been a humiliating process for me. Now don't get me wrong, I have learned a lot along the way, but not near as much as I could have had I not been so arrogant. God has only recently brought me to the point where I can truthfully acknowledge and confess: 

"I know very little about relationships."

False intimacy is all around us. However, before I continue on that thought allow me to qualify true intimacy as simply as I can (I'm learning simplicity is the true spice of life): 

Intimacy = IN - TO - ME - YOU - SEE. 

If it is true intimacy, you see into me...you see me for who I really am. Simple, right? Easy in concept, difficult in practice.

So false intimacy is provided in anything or anyone in which the "feeling" of intimacy and closeness is mimicked but not genuinely produced. Let's take pornography as an example. For men to be intimate, it takes work, practice, process, pain, and vulnerability...which takes an attitude of humility as this is a serious weakness for most men. Pornography offers to most men ready access to sexual pleasure with a picture...an image. No work, no process, no competition...and in our sinful, fleshy minds it provides someone who we can control and access anytime we desire without the pain or process of true intimacy. 

In this sinful, fallen world true intimacy comes with a price: pain & shameful nakedness. No, I'm not talking about something sexual as in bodily nudity or exposure. What I'm talking about is the kind of emotional, mental, and spiritual nakedness that takes off all the walls, all the masks, and all the false pretenses that keep others at a distance from knowing what is really going on inside of our hearts and minds. 

We have all been hurt by one person or another throughout our lives. I don't care how wonderful your upbringing may have been, your parents, siblings, or friends have and will always let you down in one way or another...it's a guarantee. Some have even vindictively hurt us with evil intent. Because we get hurt, we use that as an excuse to find relief from the pain in everything and anyone besides God. 

I'm guilty of this...and I have been for the better part of the 30 years of my existence.

iFail. 

I have kept everyone at a 'safe' distance from knowing who I really am. I have sought out MANY brands of false intimacy throughout my life, and NONE have fulfilled me at all. However, God, being Love that He is, has pursued me and shown me over the last 5 years how to have true, intimate, vulnerable, and sometimes painful intimacy with him and with a few brothers in Christ...and now my family.

I've learned a lot, but make no mistake about it...I realize I have a LONG way to go. The amazing thing though is that though I fail time and time again, I can get back up and continue forward again by God's unending grace. 

"The godly may trip seven times, but they will get up again. But one disaster is enough to overthrow the wicked." Proverbs 24:16