day 22 :: digging beneath the surface

Yesterday I was talking with a friend.  She had shared that she had been reading my blog and enjoyed getting a little glimpse into my life.  What she said after that really got me thinking.  She told me that she felt like she was a surface friend.  All the things I had mentioned on my blog, she had no idea that I had gone through some rough patches.  She said that she felt bad because she had not been there for me, had not offered me support during a hard time.

After she mentioned this, my heart was stirred.  Because honestly, it wasn't my friend that was being surface level...it was really me.  The blog posts up til now have been surface....vague...just skimming the surface.  The problem was not that my friend was a surface level friend, it was that I was not willing to let people in, to let people really see below the surface.  We all know what happens when we open up to others, when we share part of ourselves that are a little messy (or in my case a lot messy), things that are not packaged nicely as a Facebook status or an instagram photo or a pinterest board. When those things are exposed, we make ourselves targets for criticism, for judgement, for questions and hurt. We keep people at the surface, because we are comfortable with the surface.  As women, I think we are masters at keeping people at surface level.  We never want to risk making it look like we don't have it all together.

So what is the worst that would happen if we let people in a little deeper, if we really shared what was going on behind the surface?  We might find people who have gone through the exact same thing we have and have lived to tell about it.  We might be surprised to find out that the things that we think are crazy, that there is no way other people could think are actually common thoughts that run through the heads of those who we love the most.  We might find grace and acceptance that we didn't think we could ever find.  We might find love, hope, encouragement, just what we need to make it through each day.

My challenge for myself is to let those people who take the risk to get to really know me the privilege of digging beneath the surface...can you do the same?