By I have forever heard and understood that we are created with a desire to know and be known. God created us to be in relationship with Him and just because of sin, that purpose and those desires have not just faded away. This made sense in my mind, I love to know people, I am fascinated by story and I always want to know story. But that part about being known, that can be a bit on the scary side. As an introvert, groups of people are not my thing. In general having seen the various things I have seen I am not a very trusting person, even in the church. So I will know people, but I often don’t let people know me. In fact, I am trained in psychology so knowing people is my job and I am able to help people tell their stories. However, I can count on one hand most of the time the people that I have allowed into my life to know me and who I am.
This week in the course of doing a leadership development thing at my church I am realizing that maybe, just maybe it is ok to be known by more people. Now I feel like I need to put one context here. I HATE small group settings. What I typically do is attend because I feel like I should but I will often say as little as humanly possible during the small group time. Unless I am leading the small group (which I currently lead a small group through Rooted awesome program check it out at http://www.rootedntwork.com) in which case I can am able to do alright but I have had a lot of practice. I choose to lead a Rooted group because I know it keeps me outside my comfort zone but this season I decided to do IMPACT at my church which is a leadership development thing where we are in small groups. Why would I in my right mind choose to be in a small group even though I HATE being in them? Because I still have the pulling to know and be known. Just because it is uncomfortable and scary doesn’t mean that we aren’t still created wth this desire. So, I though I would give it a chance and see what would come from it. This week, this week hit me like a ton of bricks. Everything I read pointed to this idea that we are created to know and be known and we are placed in leadership roles for a reason and we have these spiritual gifts that we should be using. Some of these I had been telling myself were not really me, because they are big scary things that I am sure should belong to someone that likes being in front of people and that does not get incredible stage fright and the thought of having to speak in front of people or avoids attention in any form as much as possible. In fact I often have done tech at churches for many years because the sound booth area is an amazing hiding place and people don’t ask the people back there to speak because who would work the sound ? But in learning the spiritual gifts and being honest with myself about things that I naturally do, I am learning to be able to ackowledge that maybe I was created for more, and maybe there is a reason I have been placed into leadership roles that I have not requested.
Transformation happens in a number of ways, this’s week I decided that I was going to make an active effort to be known and the thing I typically dread (group time) I am actually looking forward to. While I know that it is still going to be a struggle because fear keeps me back a lot, I know that this is a season where I need to be known and I need to let myself be known. It makes me thankful that my group leaders won’t let me get away without talking. Are you being known? What are you doing to be known? Let’s dialogue!
