My deepest longing and most tender pain point is the desire to be seen.
I mean, seen.
I want the right people to notice when I’m wearing a mask and that I’m leaking out, even when I don’t realize it myself. I know this longing very well, and yet I still hide myself away behind layers and layers of fig leaves.
Why?
For a long time, I would have told you it was because I was afraid of others looking upon the most vulnerable parts of me and squashing them; misunderstanding them; using them against me; walking away and leaving me all alone.
Or it was because I was afraid of God’s holy light shining on my hidden parts, like an antiseptic poured out on an open wound, and the pain of that often seemed unbearable.
And while there is truth in both of these, I realized that nothing compares to the real reason: the devastation that comes from seeing myself as I really am and dealing with and holding my own nakedness in front of me.
Can you feel that? Do you feel that tenderness?
There had to have been a “between moment” for Adam and Eve after they disobeyed God in the Garden and He sacrificed the first animal to provide them with a better covering for their nakedness than the fig leaves they’d chosen: they had to undress and look at themselves before they could put on His sacrifice.
They had to see themselves as they really were – the consequences and wages of sin already taking effect in their bodies, minds, souls, and the world, no justification of their own enough to cover them – before they could be clothed in this life that God sacrificed and offered for them.
A prelude to the Death and Life of Christ sacrificed and offered for us, once and for all.
I hide from myself because the reality of that depravity that’s lived in me is so tragic; it costs another’s life to cover my depravity.
And yet in my effort to hide, there is a part of me still so acutely aware that it’s there – it’s like those moments when you stub your toe in public and your whole body groans and rolls in pain (especially down in your little toe), but you force that smile and that careless laugh and shake it off because you can’t deal with this right now, you’ve got people in front of you and business to take care of, and if you really let yourself be fully aware of how damn painful that was, you just might cry and feel too much like a five-year-old girl.
And that would just be too much. And you leak out anyway from behind your fig leaves in front of the wrong people, the ones who just aren’t able to go with you and carry the mercy of God to your nakedness.
In Exodus 17:8-16, we find Moses with Aaron and Hur on top of a hill overlooking Israel’s battle with the Amalekites. When Moses lifts up his arms with God’s staff in his hands, Israel prevails in the battle. When he lowers his arms, the Amalekites prevail. When his arms grow weary, Aaron and Hur place a rock beneath Moses for him to sit on and they stand on either side of him to hold his arms up. In doing so, Aaron and Hur do something that we all long for: someone to go with us to face the darkness and carry God’s presence into it when we’re too weak to go on our own.
What would happen if we let our innate desire to be seen override our fear of seeing ourselves?
What would happen if someone who carries the Spirit of God within them loves us enough to slow down, draw close, and offers to go with us to face the battle and the darkness and the depravity within us, not in an effort to save us or fix us but to hold our arms up so that we can stay in God’s glorious enabling presence long enough to undress, look, and exchange our fig leaves for Christ’s very own clothes?
As the Imago Dei, it is our design to go with the one in front of us to look, to hold their arms up, to see behind the fig leaves, and wait together as Christ comes with His robes of righteousness: the only covering that was ever enough to clothe our mortality (2 Corinthians 5:1-5).
It is our design to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2); to draw near to others as Christ draws near to us (John 13:34); and to partner with “the Living One who sees” us (Genesis 16) because Life happens in community and friendship and intimacy.
No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13
This has been the path I’ve walked for the last few years. And it’s been through this rhythmic blend of the Spirit of God meeting me in private and meeting me through select people that I’ve slowly been able to stay long enough to undress, to look, and to begin to know what it’s like to put on the Life of Christ. I can think of a small handful of very special people who loved enough to notice my mask, to see when I was leaking, to draw closer to me, give me a seat and hold my arms up so that I could stay and know more of God. And some of those people, I had to ask for first. This is, I think, where the practice of confession in the context of discipleship thrives.
A silly analogy, but this makes me think of young schoolgirls who won’t go to the bathroom without a friend to go with them. Facing our nakedness is easier when we know someone who loves us purely is with us, even when they’re just outside the bathroom stall.
No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.
I long to see my friends because of my love for them – I long to give them a seat and hold their arms up, not to save them or fix them, but to help them see God because I know that seeing God empowers us to live. And honestly, when my friends see God, I see God. And there are few things more satisfying than this kind of community.
We long to be seen. But we can’t be seen by the ones we long to see us if we don’t also see ourselves. And we can’t see others if we don’t first learn how to see ourselves as we really are. And we can’t see God, either, without all of these. They’re inseparable.
If this feels numinous and mysterious and hard to grasp – yep, you’re right. And who knows if I’m even explaining it well. I just know I’ve been in far too many contexts and conversations in the last week where this exact topic has been the theme that everything boiled down to. Someone on Instagram today even “randomly” told me how hard it is for them to enter their pain and sin because of their acute awareness of it.
I think people are thirsty for more of this conversation – for someone to call the Body of Christ to actively see and be seen (Psalm 139:23-24).
Here’s what I think we can walk away with, for now:
- “In order to really know love, we must receive it in an undefended state.” -David Benner
- “To be unknown by God is altogether too much privacy.” -Thomas Merton
To live out of our true selves, we must undress – become undefended – together, and hold each other’s arms up in the face of ourselves and wait for God as He drapes His very own Life over our mortality.
It is not lost on me how scary this is. I know it takes immense courage to finally let our masks come off. But we’re not on our own when we give our small, whispered “yes.” And oh, what freedom there is when we give up our own justifications, fall to our knees as we look at our nakedness, and let our Maker love us back to our design.
How joyful is the one
whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered!
How joyful is a person whom
the Lord does not charge with iniquity
and in whose spirit is no deceit!When I kept silent, my bones became brittle
from my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was drained
as in the summer’s heat.
Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not conceal my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the guilt of my sin.Therefore let everyone who is faithful pray to you immediately.
When great floodwaters come,
they will not reach him.
You are my hiding place;
you protect me from trouble.
You surround me with joyful shouts of deliverance.I will instruct you and show you the way to go;
with my eye on you, I will give counsel.
Do not be like a horse or mule,
without understanding,
that must be controlled with bit and bridle
or else it will not come near you.Many pains come to the wicked,
Psalm 32 CSB
but the one who trusts in the Lord
will have faithful love surrounding him.
Be glad in the Lord and rejoice,
you righteous ones;
shout for joy,
all you upright in heart.
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