Can we bare our own nakedness?

I am an intensely private person. This is likely equal parts nature and equal parts nurture.

I naturally recharge in solitude and through the creative arts. Perhaps because I live constantly in my own brain, the arts allows my feelings to surface and be felt in a space beyond words and reason. Nature.

I also grew up with a mother who deeply loved me, but was deeply dysregulated emotionally. She was never overtly abusive—she never hit me, yelled at me, or spoke a harsh word to me. If anything, she was overly doting. But she was volatile when angry. She would throw a broom on the floor. She would make passive-aggressive remarks about my father’s drinking, even teaching me songs to sing to him at four years old: "Un, dos, tres, muñequito de trapo es" (“One, two, three, he is a rag doll”). It was hurtful and sad, though I didn't recognize how heavy that was until I started disenmeshing and seeing my family unit as a whole.

There were good things, but there was plenty of toxicity, too. And so, I learned to self-insulate. I did what was expected of me, became what others needed me to be emotionally, and retreated into my own internal world to stay safe. Nurture.

How much of our own versions of nature and nurture do we carry within us? How much of it lies quiet, active, yet unexamined? What role does this play when God is explained to us by other fallible humans? How much of our spiritual schema is shaped by the survival lenses we had to wear just to get through childhood?

These are great questions—perhaps a few to chew on for a while, or a lifetime.

Yet with all of life's experiences, and with so many voices telling us who to be and how to perform, how do we finally just sit with God?

The more I heal and deeply ponder my own experiences, the less performative I become.

The less I care about how things ought to look on the outside, and the more I care about how they are actually experienced in the deep places of the soul.

I am learning to exist - without performance before God. I am far from perfect. I have sins I still struggle with. But I don’t want to feel unloved by God or far away from Him. I don’t want to hide in shame as Adam and Eve did (though totally understandable). I want to bear my own nakedness of my actions and show up as I am when God calls.

Because this is the breathtaking beauty in it all: He does call. He does come. He seeks us out in the garden, right where we are, even when we feel entirely unworthy of being found.

As the private person that I am, the thought of being fully seen—in all my raw nakedness—is deeply unsettling. My flaws. My inner uncurated thoughts. My fears. My vulnerabilities. My doubts. My anger. My sadness. My loneliness.

What a… breath of relief?

Yes. What if I just stopped holding all of that in, and just allowed myself to sit, totally unmasked? Fully human. Fully longing for all that we want: to be seen, to be loved, to be accepted.

This is how I want to be before God. Anything else, even a small mask, feels too heavy.

What if what has been feeling so heavy within us is not our own nakedness, but the armor we built?

Can we allow ourselves to fully come, and in the process, allow God to dress us in all things good and true? Even if it is one small step at a time?