I have always been a fiercely independent person. Often it is a cover for how uncertain or insecure I feel, but it is also a fundamental part of me and my family identity (i.e. we don't need anything from anyone that we can possible get or do ourselves). The last few years have put this stance to the test and found it woefully inadequate. So I guess now you could say that I am a recovering independent.
In this journey away from rigid independence, it has been hard to know how to be more vulnerable, intimate and appropriately needy in relationships. (See, I can't even use the word "needy" without a qualifier!) I default to a strong facade, even when I feel most tired and broken down, simply because that is all I know to do sometimes. Brave face. Chin up. Don't cry or be a wimp.
I have no idea where these messages came from. It's not like my parent's said these things to me. I don't even think they implied them in their actions. Nevertheless, they are there.
Whatever the case, this independence has followed me particularly, of all my siblings. I have always been the loner, the least likely to attach myself to any friend or activity that could need or demand something of me. And it has been nice. When all my friends were lonely and pining for boyfriends, that longing didn't hit my radar as more than an occasional crush. When everyone my age was going through the angst of fitting in, peer pressure and discovering their identity, I was blissfully ignorant. However, now that I have entered adulthood, and realized how loosely connected my heart is in even my closest relationships, I have begun to see a problem in this. Not primarily because I need to have more cry-on-the-shoulder, party-hard friendships. But, because I cannot isolate these human relationships from the relationship I have with my Heavenly Father. They reflect each other. It's almost like John knew what he was talking about when he wrote, "If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen" (1 John 4:20).
So, for the past five or six months, I have been involved in a small group that I have come to deeply cherish. But, that is not how it started. Attending small group began as a good thing to do, and event on my calendar that I generally knew I liked because I got to spend Friday evenings with some of my closest friends. (Honestly, it was more of the country-club mentality that some people ridicule the church for having.)
It took months and the continual working of the Lord on my spirit to begin to change my heart towards these times our small group shared together. It began with me noticing a disconnect in my relationship with the Lord, which illuminated to me a general problem I had connecting with anyone. And then the Lord showed me what a perfect, tangible practice ground He had provided in this small community of loving friends to humble myself and experience true relationship in openness and vulnerability.
It is a halting process. I still hit my default settings of "fiercely independent" pretty hard sometimes. But this is where the salad comes in...
As a proper young lady raised in the south, I know what is expected of a hostess and a guest. It is nothing less than perfect poise in preparation as well as personal appearance. A good southern lady should never seem hurried when her guests arrive or when she arrives as a guest (never mind that she was frantically running around with her hair half curled and only three fingernails painted seven minutes ago). This is a very hard paradigm to shift. So hard in fact, that I would rather arrive late (another, lesser, southern faux pas) to a party, than show up frenzied or unprepared.
When my unofficial small group job became bringing salads to go with dinner, you can imagine the ideal that formed in my head. I will show up with a unique salad, assembled from scratch and dressed that I made, not it a frantic rush two minutes ago, but in the ease of my early morning routine, floating through the kitchen in my unwrinkled housecoat. (It's okay. You can laugh.)
That worked for a few weeks, and then it disintegrated into me buy the ingredients on my lunch break, racing home after work to frantically assemble them, arriving late and trying to hide my racing heart and deep self-disapproval behind a perfectly painted smile. Did I already say I was deeply, deeply disappointed in myself?... every week.
Here's how the last few weeks have been: I show up to small group, with grocery bags full of individual ingredients. Not chopped, not pre-portioned in any way. Sometimes bought at a grocery store on the way. Just me and my revoked "proper southern lady" card. And you know what? No one cares. No one is upset. No one criticizes or judges me. No one complains in even the tiniest way. If anything, this method of "making" a salad is more enjoyable because we all get to do it together; and it is fun to see it materialize from a pile of seemingly unrelated items, into a beautiful and tasty salad.
This is me showing up, vulnerable on purpose. This is me, choosing to go to small group deliberately unprepared, instead of prepared and polished, frantic and late. This is one tiny way, that I am choosing vulnerability and interdependence over isolation and radical independence.
It's as easy as making (or not making) a salad.
