While reading for class this week, I came across this passage from an essay on womens' relationships by Adrienne Rich:
It isn't that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know beforehand, everything I need to tell you.
It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive, to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.
The possibility of life between us.
I read this, and I think.....I want to feel this way in my relationships with my husband, my children, my family, my friends. I want to be "eager, longing for the possibility of telling" my secrets, my dreams with those I say I love the most. I want to be able to trust someone with me, just me; not the me I put on every morning, but the me I shove underneath in order to protect. No one really knows me except for God...I don't even think I know me.
I am almost 30, but in many ways I still feel like I did at 16...unsure of who I am, of what I am supposed to be doing, of what I really believe in. I see people, talk to people and I can tell they really, I mean really, trust God. A couple weeks ago in church we sang the song "Blessed Be the Name of the Lord", and it seems every time we sing it a man who lost his 9-year old daughter is up there on stage playing guitar. I look at him as we sing, "You give and take away, still my heart will choose to say, blessed be the name of the Lord", and I think, could I see this song if God allowed one of my children to die so young? Would I trust Him? I want to trust Him like that. Yet, I know learning to trust requires handing over control, a risk all too often I am not willing to take.
In a way, I see the above passage as the cry of my soul to God, when I allow her to speak freely; although, God's voice is certainly not tentative or groping. I don't have to understand everything about Him, or need to tell Him everything (He already knows it all). I am eager to tell Him, though I don't always know what. The possibility of intimacy with Him does seem frightening to me, but in no way do I see Him as destructive, though He seeks to break down the walls I build between Him and I. He is, even when I am not, " trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us. The possibility of life between us."
