When You Let People Love You

October 6, 2015

I’m an introvert—truly, deeply, completely. I am drained by people more than I am charged by them. I could (and do) spend hours and hours and even days totally alone and I thrive.

But I know now that I need people. I truly, deeply, completely need other people.

I never used to think I did. I spent much of my high school years feeling like I was totally okay without anyone close to me, that with God on my side, I would just conquer life by myself. I didn’t want to let people in (a cross-country move and a clique-infested high school scarred me) and I didn’t think I needed to.

Life got hard. My heart got broken. Things fell apart.

More than ever, I didn’t want to let people love me. I didn’t even want to let people really see me. I just wanted to get by.

But then, on a Friday night, I stood in a room full of hundreds of college students in a new city on a campus that had recently become my new home, and I just lost it. I cried and cried as the band played. I felt everyone around me, so aware that I wasn’t alone, that I was surrounded by more strangers than I could count, and I realized I didn’t want to live my life by myself anymore. I didn’t want those strangers to stay strangers. I didn’t want to shut them out and close my heart off out of fear. I wanted to get to know them and let them get to know me, learn to love them and let them love me.

I signed up for a small group that night, and a week later, I had two older students as my leaders and fifteen other freshmen as my small group. I had a roommate and a dozen other girls that I shared a dorm hall and bathroom with. I had study groups in my classes and teams for group projects.

My life was flooded with people all of a sudden. We all were discovering who we were, finding and following our passions, growing into ourselves, exploring new things, and building relationships. We were all learning how to live and how to love, and we were doing it together.

College, more than anything else, was my crash course in community—in learning how to love and be loved. It was the best thing that happened to me and the very thing I never wanted to admit I desperately needed.

That small group stuck by me through thick and thin and showed me that girls weren’t always catty and cliquey and centered on drama. They held me when I broke down on a snowy night and talked about my broken heart. They listened to my struggles and my successes and held me accountable. They danced with me at parties, got lunch with me all the time, prayed with me, filled my room with balloons on my birthday, and became home to me.

Letting those girls love me changed me in a way that has lasted years and years. Letting down my guard to let people in transformed every part of my broken heart.

Even now, five years later, their love is changing me. Every time my introvert self is tempted to just push people away and lock my heart down, I remember how love floods in when you let it. I remember that even people who seem like strangers now can become dear friends with patient time. I remember that I need people, that people are good for me, that community keeps me alive, and that love is the fuel I need.