Love in our Dirtiness

I wasn’t going to use this post. I wrote it over a week ago, all excited about how incredibly prepared I was to have it ready so early, and then decided it wasn’t right. So I put it in my ‘needs more work’ file and started writing on another topic entirely. Part of me wonders if maybe it just seemed too scary. Either way, I cut it. 

And then it came up in a book I’d randomly chosen to read. And in the sermon at church last Sunday. And a Lion King song that got stuck in my head for two days. And in a conversation with a friend. And a heart-level email with another friend. And, just in case I hadn’t quite gotten the message yet, the TV series I just started watching.

Once got my attention. Twice could have been a coincidence. But to have the same thing come up that many times? In such varied ways? I decided God was definitely trying to tell me something, and maybe someone else needed to hear it too. So here it is:

Unconditional love comes through our dirtiness.

Griminess, imperfections, failures, dirt – call it what you will. It’s at that level of sharing and being open with people – and only through that – that we find true love.

I heard the idea put into words for the first time seven years ago at a youth leaders’ conference. I was sitting through a day-long Professional Development session and while I can’t remember what the title of the intensive was, or even who the speaker was, that particular point he made has stuck with me ever since. Probably because it was one of those complete epiphany moments for me.

Affection? Friendship? Admiration? They come through our beauty and perfection but real, gut-level, never-gonna-walk-away love comes through our dirtiness.

You will never know if someone loves you unconditionally until that person has seen every bit of your ‘dirtiness’. The secrets you don’t want to tell. The things you’ve always hidden. The insecurities, the bitterness, the failures, the doubts.

Simba, the Lion King, knew what that was like. Nala had said she loved him, yet he doubted it would last once she knew what really hid in his past. Remember his verse in ‘Can you Feel the Love Tonight?”

So many things to tell her

But how to make her see

The truth about my past?

Impossible! She’d turn away from me.

He wasn’t the only one either. It's the basis of almost every romance novel around, and a vast number of biographies. He/She loves me. But would they still if they knew…?

I think that’s why I find it so easy to believe it when God says he loves me. Because he’s seen it all. He’s seen every bit of my dirtiness – even the things I’m too ashamed to admit to myself – and he still loves me. Completely.

But it terrifies me to let others in. God, I can trust. He won’t walk away. But others? Humans like me? People with preconceptions and judgements and opinions? Revealing my dirtiness to them comes with a risk. They might decide to walk away. So I let them in partway. I show them pieces of me. I put barriers on their love because I put barriers on my life.

And all the time I wonder what it would be like if I truly let them in. And I’m not talking about random strangers or mere acquaintances, but real friends.

What would it be like if I tore down those barriers and let them see the broken me? The frail me? The one who fails and doubts and has days when I just want to go into my room, lock everyone else and all my responsibilities out, throw myself across my bed and sob for hours because I know I’ll never be enough?

What if I let them see me? The closest friends I have in the world are the people who I’ve shared those moments with. Who’ve been courageous enough to let me into their mess and given me the strength to let them see mine.

The funny thing is though, not one of those people I’ve ever shared real life with – my griminess and vulnerabilities – has ever walked away. Instead, they’ve come closer, and shown me that I’m not as alone in this as I thought I was.

We all struggle. We all have things we’re ashamed of and things we’d rather hide. But I wonder how many of those things are the same from person to person. How many times we think we’re alone only to realise the person beside us is struggling with the same thing.

Unconditional love comes not through our perfections but our imperfections and we will never truly know it until we let people in.

Take a risk. Let them see.

Who knows? Like Nala did for Simba, they might just stay.