To Be Known
By Savanah Price, Graduated in 2021 from the Youth Work Program
“Sometimes the story we’re telling the world isn’t half as endearing as the one that lives inside us” (Miller 22).
I spent over a decade of my life hiding from people, from myself, from God. I felt like everyone around me was so certain they knew who I was when in reality I barely knew myself. I’d calculate how much I would need to share so people wouldn’t ask too many questions or try to get to know me deeper. I was so scared people would see the hidden parts of me. I would share my story once in a while with others; I’d make it broad, with no real details, and leave it to their imagination. Then share one or two heart-jerking moments and boom I was set. People thought they knew me, but the amount of detail I’d hold back was a lifetime’s worth of stories. Painful stories, but I truly believed that letting people into them would only result in more pain to add to my library.
So I hid in the shadows and kept things to myself. I don’t mean I was reserved and kept to myself around others because that’s far from true. I’m an outgoing person with lots of friends and communities. But behind all I showed to others, I was a broken, hidden, reserved person. I’d never show if I wasn’t okay or reveal when I needed help. I spent my childhood taking care of others and there was no room left for someone to take care of me. So, when times got tough or I struggled, I only turned to myself because, at the end of the day, I only had me. Little did I know how wrong I was.
I met this girl in my first year of Columbia, who made my skin crawl. Seriously, I really disliked this girl. We were so different: we had different hobbies, upbringings, interests, desires, and thought patterns. I mean, she would beat herself up for days for getting lower than an ‘A’ on a paper and I was just happy if I passed a class. She was a history lover, in bed by 9pm, on the Dean’s list, Christian kid, and I was the kid who was numb, broken, going to parties, and had a single addict mother.
We were complete opposites.
But what got under my skin was that she was so open and vulnerable, it’s like she had no clue that hiding was what humans do. She was so open to sharing where she was struggling and willing to let people know the vulnerable parts of herself. She didn’t share because she desired the attention, but because she needed her community amongst her pain. She needed to talk about it, needed to cry, needed people, and needed to be known.
I came to realize later on that I never disliked her; I was jealous of her.
I envied the fact she could share so openly; she was so vulnerable, and I couldn’t get my head around it. She was an open book. She hated how vulnerable she was and felt like she shared too much. For a long time, she never knew that something she hated about herself was something I deeply desired.
Over time the two of us became close, and I enjoyed spending time with her. I started to see why people say opposites attract. As our friendship grew, I became more comfortable with her, which scared me. One night I came home from a support group called Freedom Session. It was a hard night and I was not okay. I knew she’d be in our dorm room because like I said, she’s an “in bed by 9” type of person. As I came into our room and she asked me how it went, I looked at her and broke. She had never seen me cry – I wasn’t someone who cried often, and she was just as surprised as I was.
I sat on my desk and laid it all out. She let me cry, scream, and yell about all this built-up pain I had never allowed myself to feel. She sat and listened, she didn’t need to talk or make me feel better, she knew I needed to let it out and I did. After I shared everything, she looked at me and thanked me for telling her my story and told me that this was a part of healing. It was a part of the journey I was on. At that moment I realized that people weren’t going to leave; that hiding myself wasn’t as necessary as I thought. I realized I needed people, I needed to be seen. As much as I had convinced myself I didn’t, I did.
We won’t experience healing and understand what it truly means to be human until we let ourselves be known by Jesus and by others.
Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves. His ministry was based on intimacy with others, seeking to see them and know them with love and grace. I still have to actively let Jesus see me, by letting myself desire to be known by him and by others. To get back to what God originally intended for us, to experience connection and intimacy with him and others. If we desire to work towards being whole, we must strive to be known. I am far from perfect in this area of wholeness, but my friend knows me, she’s one of my best friends. I even have the honour of being a bridesmaid at her wedding this year. She loves me wholeheartedly and unapologetically; she knows me because I let her know me. I allow myself to embrace intimacy with her, which has allowed me to learn to embrace intimacy with Jesus. My friend follows Jesus’ call to love others and walk through life together. She’s become a safe person for me because she always leads me back to Jesus. This is a small glimpse of how Jesus has worked in my life, but an important part of what He has done. One day I hope to write a book about it all. But for now, I’ll leave you with one of my favourite lines from “Scary Close” by Donald Miller, which says, “It’s true people can be as vulnerable as they want. There’s no right way to be known; as Bill Lokey from Onsite might say, ‘How else will we connect with people unless we let them know us?’” (Miller 139).