The Courage to Be Known

If you knew me when I was younger, I would have spent most of my free time wherever the fun was. I lived life by the moment. I went where the tide was going, which meant I became a flake to the majority of the people in my life. I am not proud of that, and I wish I could do it over. When I gave my life to Jesus, I wanted it to change. So, I spent much of my later years trying to be someone people can depend on. I want my family to know I’ll show up. I want the people I work with to know they can trust me. When someone I care about is walking through something difficult, I want to be the kind of person they know they can call, and I will answer.

Somewhere along the way, though, I became much more comfortable being needed than needing anyone myself. The pendulum swung in the other direction too far.

Looking back, I think there was more behind that change than I understood at the time. I didn’t just want to become dependable. I didn’t want to be that younger version of myself anymore. I knew what it felt like to disappoint people, and I carried some regret over the way I had lived. Being the person everyone could count on felt like proof that I wasn’t that man anymore. I don’t think I would have said it that way then, but somewhere along the way dependability became tied to how I saw myself.

I don’t remember ever making that decision. I think it happened slowly as life gave me more responsibility. People began looking to me for answers, and I learned how to find them. When problems would come up, I learned how to work through them. Eventually, being dependable became such a normal part of who I was that I didn’t think much about what was happening underneath it. I could walk into a room carrying something pretty heavy and still spend most of the conversation asking everyone else how they were doing.

For years, I probably would have seen that as a good thing. Maybe part of it was. I’ve always cared about people, and I don’t want that to change. But I’ve had to ask myself why it was so natural for me to make room for what someone else was carrying while having such a difficult time letting them see what I was carrying. That question has taken me somewhere I didn’t expect.

There is a difference between having people in your life and allowing those people to know you. I had plenty of relationships. I wasn’t isolated or intentionally keeping everyone at a distance. People knew what was happening in my life, but I’ve realized there were seasons when they knew much more about what I was doing than what was actually happening inside me. I don’t think I was being dishonest. I just knew how to talk about the parts of my life that I understood.

Once I had worked through something, I could tell you about it. By then, I had enough distance to understand what happened and maybe even recognize what God had been doing through it. I could talk about the hard season because I wasn’t really standing in it anymore.

What I didn’t know how to do very well was let somebody meet me before I had figured it out. That’s different. There is something uncomfortable about sitting across from someone and admitting that you don’t know what to do next. You can’t tell them what God is teaching you because you don’t know yet. You can’t explain how everything is going to turn out. Sometimes you can’t even put words around what is happening inside you.

I’ve spent a lot of time avoiding that chair. I told myself I didn’t want to burden people. Everybody had enough going on in their own lives, and I didn’t need to add mine to it. I could handle what I was carrying, and whatever I couldn’t handle belonged between God and me. That sounded responsible enough that I didn’t question it for a long time. Eventually, I began wondering whether I was protecting other people or protecting myself.

There’s a certain safety in being the person who is helping. I know what to do there: listen intently, ask deeper questions, and encourage. When the chairs are reversed, I lose some of that safety because I don’t get to decide what another person thinks after I’ve told them what’s really going on. I think that’s been underneath more of this than I realized.

Being known means allowing someone to see me before I’ve had the chance to make sense of what I’m going through. That’s uncomfortable because I’m no longer able to control the version of me they see. They get the unfinished version, the man who doesn’t always know what comes next, and sometimes struggles with the very things he’s helped other people walk through. I think that’s part of what made it easier for me to carry certain things myself.

I don’t know that I consciously worried about any of those things. I just know it was easier to carry certain things myself. My marriage has helped me see some of this differently. For a long time, I thought part of my responsibility as a husband was to protect my wife from some of what I carried. I wanted to be dependable for her, and somewhere in that desire I think I confused being dependable with always having things handled. I think there were times when I was afraid that if my wife saw how uncertain I really was, she wouldn’t feel as safe with me. I had spent so much of our life trying to be someone she could depend on that admitting I didn’t know what to do felt like I was failing at the very thing I was supposed to be for her. I understand now that I had made an assumption for her that she never asked me to make. I decided what she needed from me instead of trusting her enough to let her know me.

I’ve had to learn that there is a difference between asking my wife to carry what belongs to me and allowing her to know that I’m carrying something. That distinction has mattered.

I’ve also seen the other side of it. There have been times when I finally shared what was happening inside me, but what I really wanted was for her response to settle me. I needed to know we were okay. I wanted reassurance that the thing I was worried about wasn’t going to happen. I thought I was simply being open with her, but sometimes there was an expectation underneath my honesty that I didn’t recognize. That isn’t the kind of closeness I want anymore.

I’m learning to tell the truth about where I am without making another person responsible for making me feel better about being there. I can let my wife see something that is unfinished in me without asking her to finish it. I can tell her something hurts without needing her to take the hurt away. Honestly, I’m still learning how to do that.

There have been seasons when I was surrounded by people who genuinely cared about me and still felt alone. That’s a difficult kind of loneliness to admit because I can’t blame it entirely on what other people didn’t give me. Some of it came from what I wouldn’t let them see. I wanted people to notice when something wasn’t right without having to tell them. There were probably times when part of me wished someone would ask one more question, while another part of me was doing everything I could to look like I didn’t need the question asked. I can see now how confusing that must have been for the people who loved me. I had good people in my life. Nobody had told me they didn’t want to hear what I was carrying, and I had no reason to believe they would walk away if they knew I was struggling. Eventually, I had to consider something that was harder to admit. Maybe the distance I was feeling wasn’t because people weren’t willing to come close. Maybe I wasn’t letting them.

I had become good at giving people enough of myself to feel connected without giving them access to the places where I felt uncertain or afraid. It wasn’t intentional. Carrying things myself had simply become so normal that I didn’t realize I was doing it anymore. That’s been uncomfortable to recognize.

I wanted deeper relationships while protecting parts of myself from the very people I wanted deeper relationships with. I wanted men in my life I could trust, but trust required something from me too. At some point, I had to risk letting someone see me before I knew how they were going to respond. Maybe that’s what has been getting to me about Gethsemane. Jesus didn’t make Peter, James, and John figure out that something was wrong. He told them. He let words come out of His mouth that revealed what was happening inside Him.

I’ve read that story a lot, and naturally my attention was always drawn toward Jesus praying to the Father and what was about to happen at the cross. Lately, though, I’ve noticed something else. Jesus brought people with Him. He took Peter, James, and John farther into the garden and told them what was happening inside Him. He told them His soul was overwhelmed with sorrow.

What gets me is that Jesus knew they couldn’t do anything about what was coming, and He still wanted them near Him. They didn’t need to understand it or know what to say. In fact, they couldn’t even stay awake with Him. Yet He still chose to let them into that moment. And Jesus knew they would. Still, He let them come close enough to see Him there.

I’ve thought about that a lot.

Jesus’ relationship with the Father didn’t remove His willingness to let other people near Him in His sorrow. He didn’t disappear into the garden by Himself and return once He had collected Himself. The men closest to Him were allowed to see something that wasn’t cleaned up or comfortable, and probably they hadn’t seen before in Him.

For years, I think I believed maturity meant needing less from other people. I’m not sure I believe that anymore. Becoming secure in who I am before God is finally becoming comfortable enough to stop managing how everyone else sees me. I don’t have to convince another man that I have everything together. I don’t need him to think I’m always confident or that my faith never wavers. What he thinks about me doesn’t determine who I am. Living that way is harder than writing it.

There is still a moment in certain conversations when I know I’m standing at a fork in the road. When someone asks how I’m doing, I can feel the answer forming before I’ve really thought about it. It’s an answer I’ve given hundreds of times because it isn’t necessarily untrue. I’m doing fine. Things have been busy. I’m just tired. Those answers have served me well. They’ve also helped me hide.

I’ve begun noticing that the men who have mattered most in my life aren’t necessarily the ones who had the best answers. They’re the ones who seemed to know when my first answer wasn’t the whole answer. They didn’t interrogate me or force me to talk. They simply stayed in the conversation long enough that I had to decide whether I was going to keep giving them the safe version or tell them what was actually going on. I’ve needed that more than I knew.

There is something about letting someone see a part of you you’re not proud of and realizing it hasn’t changed the way they see you. Things you shared didn’t make them uncomfortable or cause them to pull away. They simply know you a little more fully now, and somehow the relationship is still safe. Maybe even safer than it was before.

I’ve spent years believing I wanted brotherhood, and I still do. But I think my understanding of it is changing. Brotherhood isn’t created because a group of men spend time together or talk about meaningful things. At some point, somebody has to risk telling the truth before he knows how the truth will be received. That has made me think about the other side of this too. I want to be someone another man can tell the truth to. That’s different from being the guy with the answer.

Sometimes I have to fight my instinct to immediately start helping. I’ve learned that the moment someone lets me into something painful isn’t necessarily the moment he needs me to tell him what to do about it. There are times when the best thing I can offer is to stay there long enough for him to know he isn’t carrying it by himself anymore. I’m not always good at that either.

I like solutions. Sitting with something unresolved can make me uncomfortable, especially when I care about the person sitting across from me. But I’m beginning to understand that people don’t always need me to make sense of their story. Sometimes they just need somewhere safe enough to tell it. Maybe that’s part of what I’ve been missing all these years.

I spent so much time trying to become someone others could depend on that I never stopped to consider whether being dependable also meant allowing people to show up for me. I don’t have to give up the man I’ve become in order to do that. Letting someone know when I’m struggling doesn’t undo the years I’ve spent learning to show up for people. It just means I’m finally allowing some of them to show up for me too. I don’t have to disappear inside of being dependable.

I’m still figuring out what that looks like. I don’t think everyone needs to know everything about me, and I don’t believe wisdom means living without boundaries. There are parts of our lives that should only be entrusted to people who have shown they can hold them carefully. But I also know myself well enough now to recognize how easily wisdom can become an excuse for staying hidden.

There are still times when I’d rather wait until I’ve figured something out before I let anyone see it. I’d rather tell the story once I know the ending. I’d rather show someone the scar than let them see something that hasn’t healed yet.

I’m beginning to understand that some of the relationships I’ve wanted most deeply require me to stop waiting until I have an ending. Sometimes being known begins with sitting across from someone I trust and telling him where I actually am, not where I think I should be or where I hope I’ll be a month from now. Just where I am.