Known and Loved by Kacey Beckham
One thing all Fellows do throughout the first semester of the program is to share their story with the group during our Monday night roundtable meetings. We all have roughly forty-five minutes to an hour to talk about who we are and how we got here. This was an element of the program I knew about before getting here and it didn't phase me too much. Until it became time for me to share, and I decided to challenge myself to really tell my story. The good, the bad, the messy, the beautiful, and the downright ugly. Every other time I have shared my story I have only had a few minutes, or gave it to people I didn't really know, so I highlighted the big moments but never went too deep. This time I decided I would really tell it and be honest. As I processed with other Fellows and friends outside the program before I shared, they all said, "You're going to feel so free getting it all out there for everyone! It's going to feel so great!"
It didn't.
After I shared I had knots in my stomach for days. The voice of shame kept speaking over me "Why did you say that? Now they know the truth. They probably think you're crazy. That was so stupid. You should have sugar coated everything." I watched several Brene’ Brown videos trying to justify my vulnerability, but it didn't help. I tried to numb the embarrassment with Stranger Things and ice cream. While that can cure a lot of things, it didn't cure my distress. I couldn't shake this feeling of shame and a fear of what people thought. As I went to finally process these feelings with the Lord, a cliche Christian phrase came to mind: "fully known and fully loved." I had heard it said many times but always thought it was a little "bumper stickery" and not really Biblical truth. However, the more I thought about it the more I realized I had never grasped that kind of love before, yet it is how the Lord loves us. Tim Keller has a quote about this concept. He says,
“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
When I went to process these feelings I realized how much I have lived in the comfort of being loved but not known. I'm not going to lie, I really like that comfort. I have spent so much of my life holding onto this image of "having it all together." I have tainted my problems to make them not look as big as they are and have tried to seem more together than broken, especially to fellow Christians. All of this coming out of the fear that if people really knew me, they couldn't really love me, as well as, from a place of self-righteousness. I’ve thought “they can know I need a little savior from a few small sins but not a Savior who had to come to earth and offer Himself as a perfect sacrifice.” And this sacrifice had to be given because my sin was so great I could never, ever in a million years, be in the presence of a Holy God on my own. When I deny my sin and brokenness or even just try to make it look better than it actually is, I deny my need for a Savior. Not to say I've never been vulnerable before or I've lied about myself to every person I have ever talked to, but I think I've tried to carve an image of myself more than I have realized.
Here's the thing, being fully known and fully loved is completely a Biblical concept. God is omniscient. Several scriptures point to how He knows all things including us on an intimate level (John 10:22, 1 Corinthians 8:3, Psalm 147:5, Hebrews 4:13) He knows our stories better than we do. He knows what He wrote. He knows the pain, the heartache, the joy, the challenges, the bad decisions, and everything in between. He knows us individually and in relation to others; what we like, what bothers us, our Starbucks order, what we are thinking, our hearts. He knows it all. I could quote scripture on where God says He loves us but as I am learning in our Metanarrative of the Bible class, the whole Bible is a love letter to us! Showing us He is never leaving us! Showing us how we need Him! Telling us the story of His Son who gave His life so we may be able to abide with Him! He wants to be united with us! In our unit about a book called Theology of the Body, we looked at how God wants to marry us. The Bible is a love letter from a groom to His bride. Our God knows all things including the pain in our lives and doesn't cower. He doesn't find it repulsive. He doesn't think we are weird. He sends His son anyway so He can be with us in our struggles and challenges. All of this so that our pain does not have the final say in our lives. He sees our sin and marries us anyway. We are fully known and fully loved and that kind of love sets us free to be broken; to embrace the love of a Savior who wants to be with us and heal our pain, who longs to forgive us of our sin. We have a Holy God who longs to be united to sinners. That is a fact that I pray will forever leave me in awe and wonder.
I am still learning to grasp the concept that He fully knows me and truly loves me, and some days I understand it better than others. But this Fellows class is showing me a glimpse of this concept. I'm certainly not the only one who has shared hard things, and it has been so beautiful to watch us care for each other in light of our stories; to know how to better love, support, and pray for one another. The grace they have shown me even after they knew all these things about me has been life-changing. Obviously we can never fully know each other because no one can and we will continuously fall short of loving each other perfectly, but holy moly, am I grateful for how we have leaned in when we could have turned away and how we have continued to embrace each other when we could have cowered. I have experienced more of the Lord's love for me through them and I'm so thankful.
