from the flickr photostream of notquitealmost

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“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 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

Something I appreciate about people like C.S. Lewis and Mike Mason is that they had the foresight to tell their readers what love is.  What marriage is. So often, I stumble across books and conversations that tell me how to be married.  What to do.  But learning the actions, or even the attitude, of a healthy and happy wife does me little good if I don’t know what it is that I am doing.  If I don’t know what marriage is.  If I don’t know what love is.

All of us have had some part of our pre-married understanding of what marriage is shattered or at least challenged.  It is inevitable.  This break down in understanding and expectations is where a lot of us begin a downward spiral towards divorce.  If I don’t know what marriage is, then as my marriage is not meeting my expectations, I begin to assume it is all wrong.  My marriage, that is, not my expectations.  It is easy to fall into the trap of believing that our expectations are the base line and that if the marriage moves away from this base line, then something is dreadfully wrong.

But knowing what marriage actually is brings clarity and peace.  It does not make it easier, necessarily, but it does bring peace.  I am grateful for these words about vulnerability and love.  Because they allow me to make sense of what is happening in my life; in my marriage.  These words allow me to step back on a very hard day and say, “I feel this way because being vulnerable is gut-wrenching.  So this feeling has to do with being close to Herb.  It does not (necessarily) have anything to do with Herb himself or the marriage being an abomination!”

Knowing that vulnerability causes a strong reaction, I can step back and figure out what my unique reaction tends to be when I am feeling raw and open and at risk for being hurt.   From my perspective, vulnerability is the thing that could allow me to be completely loved.  Or destroyed. This doesn’t appeal to me.  So, instead of embracing it, I reject it.  In my life, vulnerability often gets passed over and unrecognized.  Because instead of realizing I am feeling vulnerable, I go right to anger.  I don’t like being exposed or fully seen.  If I am fully seen, what will he think?  And then, what will he do?  I have already answered that question in my mind: he will leave me.  So I become angry.  I feel angry.  I act angry.  And I assume it is because I can’t stand him.  Because I don’t like our life together.  Because I am miserable being his wife.  That is when I want to leave.  And for so long, I have mistaken it for hate.  When I become that angry, I feel like I hate him.  And so it seems logical that if I hate him, I should not be married to him.

But what I need is awareness of what is actually happening.  I don’t hate him.  I hate being seen by him.  Because I am scared. Scared he will leave me.  What I mistook for hate towards my husband is actually the opposite - I love him so much that the thought of loosing him or being left by him is more painful than anything I have ever experienced.   On my most sane days, I am able to take this information that I have gathered about how I respond to being vulnerable with Herb, and I can then try and make choices that build us up.  This is not to be mistaken as a big pink bow, tying up the delima, but rather a tattered map, giving a little bit of direction in the midst of a difficult journey.

How do you tend to experience vulnerability?  Share it here if you like.  But it is a personal question, so it makes sense if you choose not to.  But explore this idea somewhere.  With a friend.  In a journal.  On a wall with a can of spray paint (preferably a wall within your property line!).  It doesn’t really matter how you explore it . . .  but DO explore it… and see if what you find is as invaluable to you as it has been to me.