Most of us, I’d imagine, have heard throughout our lives a constant refrain to put our “best selves” forward. We’ve been told by teachers and parents and well-meaning careers advisors to make sure we highlight our best qualities, our strongest giftings. To make sure any potential employer or suitor or friend knows the good they’d be missing out on if they fail to choose us. Make sure you sell yourself. I mean it’s a cut-throat world out there and you better do something to stand out. Now imagine that message coming in equal fortitude with the message, you have nothing to bring. You are worthless. You are just a drain, unwanted and unimpressive in every conceivable way. How could one even begin to conceive of a way forward? What kind of inner strength would be required to stop hopelessness descending?

This is the fight. This is the daily wrestle of the culture we swim in. It is the constant narrative of many society would consider poor or marginalised but it’s also the repeating voice of insecurity and anxiety amongst many who appear to “have it together”. The beautiful and bewildering thing is each one of us have an inbuilt antidote to this vicious spiral. We are made, according to the creation narrative, to have an inbuilt need for the other. To have a deep longing within us that cannot be satisfied outside of human connection. We were made to have questions that can only be answered in true, healthy, positive friendship and equally we were inbuilt with the answers to the consuming doubts of the person next to us. We were always meant to be a message of hope to one another, a story of kinship, a safe place to unleash, with ferocity, the craziness of our inner lies. We were always meant to hold each other fast through the storms of doubt and fear, of grief and pain. Not fixing, just holding and calling to mind again and again and again, that we were made for each other.

Unfortunately, we cannot live with a “bring your best self” mentality and expect to find connection with those experiencing brokenness and pain. We cannot wear a mask of togetherness and expect to find kinship with those deeply entrenched in the process of coming apart at the seams. It is not our giftedness, our expertise and our brilliance that those around us need as much as they need our humanity. Bryan Stevenson in his heart wrenching exploration of the American justice system, Just Mercy, puts it this way

“I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion.”

It has been personally a tough few weeks. I, alongside many others, have experienced a great deal of loss. Some through death, some through relocation, some through circumstances (as hard as I’ve tried) that I cannot control. I’ve lost people I love, lost relationships I found life in. In places I’ve lost hope for life change, lost patience for the slowness of this Kingdom coming. I’ve been tempted to lose belief in the things we are reaching for but in those moments of doubt and pain and confusion it has not been the brilliance of one or the giftedness of a few that have brought strength to my soul. It has been a multitude of shattered, broken, vulnerable, beautiful, courageous men and women from every conceivable walk of life who have simply brought themselves. Unsure of what to say or how to say it, knowing their words will most likely hit the floor before they hit my ears but certain that something of the divine, something of the presence of almighty God is released in their showing up, in their embrace; even in their lasagnes. To these faithful, fellow broken humans I am deeply thankful for your presence.

We are meant to need one another. We are meant to be incomplete on our own. We might just be at our absolute best when we show up in the full knowledge that we have little to bring. That we are just as broken, just as vulnerable as the one we came to serve. We might just taste the wonder of the Kingdom a little sweeter and fuller when we allow our vulnerability to declare that we are one.

Photo by veeterzy on Unsplash