"Made to be Known" by Constance McIntosh

(taken from http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life_article.php?id=7391)

One of the greatest complaints heard from those of us in the post-college vacuum stems from the feeling of being alone—really alone. We just left the world where you live with three other people in order to afford rent and see another thousand or so every day on campus—where “résumé builder” activities force us into contact with dozens of unexpected people and class projects turn into uninvited bonding experiences with miscellaneous classmates. We live in a world where, as “grown ups” we’re supposed to find our own way to work, live in our own place and decide for ourselves who we want to spend time with. We move (or our friends move) to find jobs, and suddenly we find ourselves falling through the cracks of the relationship world. No classmates, no family, no school friends. Just us and whoever we manage to collect.

Now, don’t get me wrong, most of us can spark a conversation with an interesting acquaintance and sometimes manage to turn it into coffee or a date, but most of us still feel alone—if we let ourselves.

In college, I lived with four other girls. I was highly involved in my church’s campus ministry, and pretty much every spare moment I had outside the classroom (and the homework drill) I had somebody to talk to.

Then I graduated.


My friends moved away or got married. I lost contact with those who were still in college because our schedules had become so drastically different. I was still a 10-hour drive away from family, and my highly populated community fizzled out. By the end of the summer after graduation, the only people I really talked to anymore were my boyfriend and one other friend.

I quickly spiraled into serious depression. Everyone had let me down. Not one of the many friends who promised to stick with me had actually done it. I had stayed in Orlando to follow God and found myself completely abandoned.

This has been hitting me hard the last couple of months, as my boyfriend and I have been going through some rough times, and I have had no one (except, periodically my one other friend) to talk to about it. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, my other friend called me on it. She asked why don’t I at least try talking things out with one of the few friends I still have contact with from college.

“I’d scare her,” I replied. “I’m too messed up right now.”

She just looked at me. And that’s when it clicked.

We live in a world where success is being polished, put-together and cutting edge. Even our junk, if we admit to having it, needs to be of a certain type—needs to be cool, extreme or counter-cultural. Nobody wants to just be a mess. We have to spin our stuff just right or figure out which tone of voice to say it in, to make sure that when people hear us, we come out looking good. So we learn the tricks. We pick up a vocabulary that makes our struggles sound mild (really, we have it all together) or interesting (don’t you just wish you could be as cynical/jaded/messed up as me?), and we shade everything we say just right.

So nobody ever knows us.

I’m the queen. I wear black and scowl from underneath my eyebrow bar, make sarcastic comments and listen to angry music—and I get off as the cool, counter-cultural, artistic type. People miss the part where I get in my car at the end of a rough day and start crying like a girl. (I am one of those though I don’t always like to admit it.) They miss the part where I sometimes just want somebody to tell me it’s going to be OK, because I feel lost and sad. All the jokes and the funky clothes and the rock music just become the wall I use to keep people out—when all I really want is for them to come in.

So, finally, I tried talking to my friend. I told her that things were rough and that I didn’t know how it was going to work out and how scared I was of a good thing going bad. And she didn’t get scared, and she wasn’t overwhelmed by my mess. She sat there, across the table from me at Chik-fil-A, and told me that God knew what He was doing either way and that I could call her anytime because she loved me and wanted to be there for me.

At the end of the day, the places where we most need people to be there for us are the places we’re most scared to let them into. We buy into the lie that says that people will only stick with us as long as we can sell ourselves just right, and we hide our real wounds so that nobody really knows us.

But the fact is that we were made to be known, both by God and by other people. Allowing others to know us is terrifying, and sometimes we get burned, but the alternative is worse. Because without the vulnerability and openness that real relationship requires, we live our lives cold and alone, starving for community that we just can’t find any other way.