Why the Hardest (and Best) Thing to Do is Just Show Up
Showing up seems simple.
I just go, and there I am. I’m there. I showed up. Easy.
More and more, though, I’m realizing the showing up is often the hardest part.
It isn’t easy to keep showing up to sit on a blue couch across the room from a wise man who asks questions I don’t have the answers to. It isn’t easy to show up to the yoga studio when I would much rather stay in bed. It isn’t easy to show up to the first date, with a hundred unknowns running through my mind, making my palms sweat and my heart race. It isn’t easy to walk through the sanctuary doors of a church again, after being hurt and being burned and falling out of step with the whole thing.
Showing up is hard.
There’s a vulnerability to it. We don’t show up because we have everything figured out. We rarely show up because we want to show off. We show up because we’re seeking. We’re searching. We’re wondering (and maybe wandering a bit too) and we’re wrestling and we know we can’t do it on our own.
So we show up to these places, opening ourselves up to others, and it’s hugely vulnerable. Showing up isn’t just saying “I’m here.” It’s also saying “I’m here, and I have this mess, and I’m bringing these weaknesses, and I have all these questions and concerns, and there are more than a few scars on my heart, and I’m looking for something here even if I don’t know what it is yet, and I’m hoping you can help me, or at least that I’ll find a friend to walk the journey with me, but I’m scared out of my mind, and I don’t know how to do this well, but here I am.”
And so we realize: showing up is hard.
But it’s beautiful, too.