Maybe you don’t think you do. Maybe you are a renegade, a cowboy or cowgirl, who believes that the life of a loner is the way. It is just not true. Oh, I have wished at times it was. I have bought the lie that life is easier as a solo flight without the entanglements of other people. And sure, you can survive this way, but is it really living?
Let me outline my growing up. I learned early on how to pack my relational parachute. As a kid our life seemed always in transit. My dad moved us more times than I can count. I am sure each one was well intentioned to better our situation, but with each move came a new set of goodbyes and a fresh introduction of hellos. At some point after enough times, whatever that number became, I learned that with each hello came a pending goodbye. So in an effort to soften the blow of the adios, came a distancing from the start.
Healthy? No. A coping mechanism? Of course.
Why this unpacking of my childhood transience? To simply say this, what I learned in the capacity to disconnect was my great need for connection. In learning that relationships were temporary and transactional, I realized that what my soul longed for was something more than an exchange system of pleasantries and something authentic and real. What was fostered by my moves is not built into our culture through digital connections. Because we have spent months “following” someone we think we know them. In some way, we know about them. We know what they eat, read, and where they go. Yet, our soul has a longing to be really known.
Maybe it is why we fly deeper into the fly-paper of social media. It is a heart cry to be seen and known without all the risk of loss. To be known by someone means taking a risk that along the way you get hurt. Vulnerability is the admission price of a real relationship. In order to ride the ride of life, we have to buy a ticket into the gate of being fully known.
It is why I think the Lord left Adam and Eve without clothing. Sure it may have sparked the libido to populate the planet, but I think it was because in that first moment as the imago dei of God they were fully seen by each other. It was a moment of no shame, no hiding. Now I am not advocating for a nudist colony. My body is less than the perfection of the first man. I am ringing the bell for us to be fully seen by those God has put in close proximity to us.
Even as I confidently write these words, I swallow hard in my throat, because for me it means I take off that emotional parachute with a quick rip cord to bail me out of moments of intimacy. It means jumping out of the plane without it. Okay, so maybe the metaphor went too far, but you get what I am saying. It is risky.
Why do I keep coming back to this topic in my writing? It is simple, I fight this everyday of my life. I fight the presentation of perfection. Even in being flawed is often carefully crafted to make me look more human. And what the heart beats and cries out for is that space to just be Jeff. In a handful of spaces, I have found that freedom. I have found that in my wife and a few close friends. I have found that freedom that I am loved and cared for just as I am without pretense or need to guard my heart. In that is a small reflection of that first garden moment where the created beings of Adam and Eve lived without shame or hiding. They found communion and community with God and each other. Why do we need each other? It is simple, you cannot be fully authentic without the context of community. Sure you can be you, who you are, but that who was meant to be embraced, loved, cared for within the setting of others.
So here is my best effort to put my parachute away. Here is me laying down my exit strategy from the relationships of my life. Because we were created for community. We were built for connections that are real and deep and meaningful.
