Uncomfortably Honest

My co-pastor has a book coming out later this summer.

I've read it. It's good. Really good.

It's also brutally honest.

Raw.

Uncomfortably so.

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I've been back and forth on how I feel about vulnerability, especially online.

Not my own vulnerability, though. I'm (a little too) thoughtful about what I write online. I think, rethink, ruminate, overthink, and obsess over every single word that I post online. Even the stuff that seems like I wrote it in a drunken stupor: absolutely planned. I don't write anything online without acknowledging that it may come back to haunt me in twenty years.

No, I worry about some of my friends who are prone to sharing intimate parts of their lives.

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I probably shouldn't worry about them. I'm certain most of them think about what they write before they put it out there, and understand that once it's on the internet, it's forever on the internet.

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But I still worry. I don't like the idea of my friends regretting the things they write, and having it haunt them that they can't take those words back.

I don't like when my friends hurt.

I don't want them to regret their vulnerable moments.

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That said, I really enjoy reading about people's reality. The stuff beneath the surface.

I don't really enjoy surface-level friendships. I like when people tell me how they actually are.

I like that from my writers too.

Especially when it comes to writing about faith.

Yes, absolutely exegete scripture. Break down how this particular passage would have hit in the first century.

But also, what does/did all of that scripture work mean in the midst of your family tragedy? The struggles of parenting? The divorce? The affair? The addiction? The loss of a pet? The lost job? Being priced out of your apartment? The dating woes?

That's the kind of stuff I connect with these days.

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“Share from your scars, not your wounds” is a good rule of thumb.

But a lot of us won't even share our scars.

I get it. It's frightening. And when it's out there, it can't really go back in the box.

But that vulnerability is also a gift to many of us.

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That's why I appreciate Josh's book so much.

Deep scars.

Fearlessly shared.

A gift.

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