Real Talk: What We May Not Know We Are Missing
The silence was palpable, the swallows hard and heard. The words then shared brought both sorrow and life. When one offers up vulnerability in a space where friendship goes deep, the room is forever changed. Tender brokenness brings strength—this is mystery. Pain held gently with open hands, others invited into the healing, brings us all round, brings us all together, God at the center. This hard truth, this real talk, is what we may not know we are missing.
I’ve been in different circles—small groups, youth groups, Bible studies, community groups, missional communities—and always the same truth: when we open up, we let both God and others in. I’ve witnessed the unannounced loss of a young child in the dead of night rip hearts right in two, and in grieving together, God was able to reach in deeper through the cracks of pain. In circles where we have each shared our gospel stories—our own creation, fall, redemption, and restoration—vulnerability and expectancy set a new precedent. I’ve been privy to real talk that offered others a road into the depths of childhood abuse, the wounds of divorce, the bonds of addiction, the gravity of infidelity. In sharing we reverse our natural tendency to retreat in pain, as I recently listened to Michele Cushatt impart in a podcast interview with McKenzie Koppa of Cultivating the Lovely. When we talk real we don’t let the pain have the final say.
It’s easier for me to be the support, the encourager, the shoulder to share than to be the one leading out by being vulnerable first. I tend to try my hardest to not let things rattle my calm. Yet I know my peacemaker personality does not excuse me from the need to shape the culture within my circles with my own transparency.
Somewhere along the way soft breathed was the lie that to be whole meant I had to keep it altogether—and I adopted it as truth—let the calm I tried to maintain define me. But it is not me, not truly. Inside, I grieve loss deeply: childhood memories once sweet turned sharply bittersweet, parted ways of friends close as family, deaths—some looming, some unexpected. Pretending I’m ok when I’m really not doesn’t make the pain go away, and it shields me from the real talk that has the power to transform.
This I am learning: small steps in releasing our tense grip on our own pain and brokenness make the next steps easier to take. Real talk should happen in safe spaces, with those who love us enough to tell us the truth, with those who have our backs and take our hand when we are weak. Yet it takes both time and intentionality to cultivate friendships into well-deep, safe places. Though our steps may be small, we can make them deliberate.
Vulnerability—real talk—deals a lethal blow to our pride. It peels away the masks we use to cover our raw. Without our opened up offerings of real and raw and sometimes ugly, accountability cannot happen. We must name the struggle when we choose to step into the realm of real among friends, and naming a thing deflates the power it has over us. Naming that thing in the presence of others is to place ourselves in the seat of accountability—to invite our community to hold us up and help us stay strong.
Offering others a window into the things that slice us the deepest while we still proclaim the goodness of our God is a declaration that we trust Him in all things—that He is faithful and He feels our pain too. We can have confidence in His character in the face of an earth-shattering medical diagnosis, loved ones we lose before we feel ready, and choices we wish more than anything we could take back. When we go to the very edge and hope pulls us back, it’s not a story of shame but of redemption.
Where do you tend to hang out in your circles? If the safe, shallow waters are alluring, may you cling to the truth that you are deeply known and loved immensely by your heavenly Father, and you don’t need to keep up pretenses before Him. There is nothing you can do to earn His love or make it go away. It is constant. Ever present. Relentless.
Let it go. Let it slip through your fingers and fall away—shame, rejection, fear. It’s too heavy for you to bear the brunt of the weight. Jesus has already paid the price to law it firm on His own back.
I pray that today would be the day we drop the pretenses and adopt the real. If we don’t yet have safe places to share, would You show us the relationships to cultivate, to show up for, to begin, small step at a time, to let ourselves be truly known? I ask specifically that You would connect us with friends who live right in our own neighborhoods who will become this close of friends—the real-talk kind of friends. Thank you for Your grace, Your relentless pursuit of us, and the price You paid to take our guilt and shame away. Thank you for the freedom we have in You. May we help lead others near us to the same freedom as well as we go first, boldly, albeit slowly, leading out in vulnerability.
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