Vulnerability,
Brené Brown says it’s uncertainty, risk, emotional exposure—
but it feels to me like standing barefoot
at the edge of the sea,
where the sand still remembers my name
and the water does not.
Lately, the tides have changed.
What once felt like a gentle shoreline
now asks me to swim—
past the protective reef,
past what is familiar,
into waters that are deep, dark,
and dangerous.
I carry questions like stones in my chest:
Will this pastoral seed bear fruit?
Is this the future God imagines for me?
Who am I becoming in this crossing?
My body answers before my mind can speak:
a nervous stomach,
a missing appetite,
a weariness that settles into my bones.
Fear swims close,
anxiety circles,
and I feel small against the vastness
of decisions and callings.
And then—Christmas.
Not glitter and noise,
but rooms where time has slowed,
where bodies bend,
where memory flickers like a candle in the wind.
The aged and sick became my teachers.
They offered no theories,
only their vulnerable lives.
I saw bodies loosening their grip on control,
minds releasing what they can no longer hold,
and hearts learning—slowly, bravely—
to accept what is.
I saw sadness that comes from being forgotten,
loneliness born not of absence,
but of silence from those who were once helped,
once loved.
I saw frailty without disguise,
grief for lost strength and vanished friendships,
and beneath it all,
a longing—not for answers,
but for presence.
Yet there was beauty there.
A quiet holiness.
A surrender that did not collapse,
but leaned.
An abandonment of self-reliance
that opened space for God,
for caregivers,
for companionship.
They did not fight the sea.
They floated in it.
And in their vulnerability,
they gifted me my own.
So now I pray—
not to return to the shore,
but to trust the water.
To believe that vulnerability is not failure,
but formation.
Not weakness,
but the place where grace breathes.
Grant me the courage
to befriend my uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure,
to name my fear without shame,
to share my trembling knees with trusted companions.
Let vulnerability walk beside me—
in ministry,
in decisions,
in prayer—
not as an enemy,
but as a sacrament of becoming.
Teach me, O God,
to swim not with mastery,
but with trust;
to discover that beyond the reef,
even the deep ocean
can carry me.
Beloved Reflections 