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A few nights ago, I got a call from my son from his military base. Wanna know what was great?

He called me because he had a bad day.

And because he let me into his world and the ways he felt exposed, tossing around some question marks about himself–I got the chance to care for him and eventually even make him laugh.

And this morning–lifting weights as I listened to a new-for-me podcast I’m loving, by Curt Thompson, MD, author of The Soul of Shame–Thompson caused a lightbulb moment for me.  He pointed out that vulnerability is a bid for connection. 

The alternative in vulnerability? Shame.

We’ve all felt that one, too–our vulnerability creating space for rejection,  for harm.

Look at Adam and Eve, Thompson points out. They come into this world naked–vulnerable. And before sin, they were unashamed in that vulnerability.

In fact, he poses, we all come into this world naked and vulnerable. And that’s a bid for connection, right there when we’re squalling and hungry and cold.

“I’ll find you”: I still need to hear it

But my throat caught as I listened to his very first episode on Monday. Thompson mentioned that what we don’t need to be is perfect parents.

Instead, he insisted, what our kids long to know in this world is that someone will always be looking for them; will always try to find them.

We are born, Thompson says, from the moment we open our eyes, “looking for someone looking for us.”

We need to hear, I’ll find you. 

The first one to say, “I’ll find you”

I’ve reflected on this so much in the last year, chewing on what I see of God in Luke 15–the three stories Jesus tells of the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to look for the one. The woman who lost her coin. And the prodigal son.

He is a God who endures the long struggle to find us.

I felt this profoundly as I recently endured a week that bent me physically and emotionally in half. And after so very many of those recently, my resilience felt so thin you could see through it.

In fact, I didn’t know my way out.

Two things then happened.

  1. My mom–even though I turned 42 last week–emotionally came to “find me” in a narrative of shame I couldn’t shake. For more than an hour, she let me talk about all the things in my head that didn’t sound entirely true, but sure felt like it.
  2. In one of the most vulnerable weeks of my marriage, my husband and I fell in love even more. He came to me in my emotional pit, and didn’t see me as too mucky to go after. He listened. He held me. He came toward me when I felt like a burden, and too weak to benefit…anyone.

And in that vulnerable bid for intimacy of mine, I found connection. And like any of us, that hasn’t always been the case.

“He looks like this”

If you’re in a similar place, maybe you’ll find comfort like I have in trauma-informed therapist K.J. Ramsey’s book, The Lord is My Courage:  Stepping through the Shadows of Fear toward the Voice of Love. (It’s my favorite in this vein since Aundi Kolber’s Try Softer: A Fresh Approach to Move Us out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival Mode–and into a Life of Connection and Joy.)

Working through Psalm 23 as her scaffolding, Ramsey argues,

When a sheep is lost or hurt, a shepherd doesn’t wait for them to find their way back to the flock. A good shepherd seeks their lost sheep. A good shepherd knows their sheep’s worth and goodness is not contingent upon their capacity to find their own way back home.*

Ramsey poses that every temptation of ours is about reaching for the benefits of connection–security, joy, well-being, belonging–without the vulnerability of a relationship.

I see now that my mom and my husband reaching toward me, especially when I was shrinking away, mimicked God’s own presence to me.

And this is what I think any of us, and especially our kids need to know, need to see, need to hear.

I’m looking for you. I’ll do the hard work to find you.

(Who in your life might especially need to know and sense this about God right now?)

Like this post? You might like

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*Ramsey, K.J. The Lord Is My Courage (p. 37). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.